Volume 105, Issue 18 Monday, February 1, 2016
McGill THE
DAILY Septum-pierced hipsters since 1911 mcgilldaily.com
Published by The Daily Publications Society, a student society of McGill University. The McGill Daily is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory.
A HAIRY CONVERSATION Page 12
Table of Contents 03
Want to Wake up 5 minutes before class? no problem WHen You liVe at le peterson! studY peacefullY in tHe Heart of tHe liVeliest neigHbourHood in montreal.
JusT 300 MeTres froM McGiLL uniVersiTy. Le Peterson offers you first-class amenities:
• 28th-floor fitness studio overlooking the city • 28th-floor skydeck with outdoor climbing wall
15
NEWS
February 1, 2016 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
SCI+TECH
Employment equity at McGill criticized
A potential breakthrough in ALS research
Continuing Studies association under fire
Tolkien inspiration for new species name
Return of SNAX sandwiches
17
Trans prisoner day of action held
Petition fights lack of rehearsal spaces
Controversy surrounds student federation discussion
Conspiracy! gives hilarious interpretation of Christopher Marlowe
Race Project rolls out
Jef Barbara reframes music genres
09
The shift of meaning-making in visual arts
COMMENTARY
Mental health follow-through is critical Slave patrols and modern policing Deadly healthcare bureaucracy Canada must act on COP21
12
19
CULTURE
EDITORIAL
Action for hiring equity now!
20
COMPENDIUM!
The Mount Olympus family
FEATURES
Starting the dialogue on facial and body hair
• Multimedia entertainment room with demonstration kitchen • Underground parking • 24-hour concierge and guest suite VisiT our saLes cenTre and discoVer whaT Le PeTerson can offer you.
*This illustration is an artist’s rendition
80% sold studio from $240,900 + tx 1-bedroom from $256,900 + tx 2-bedroom from $423,000 + tx
445 PrÉsidenT-Kennedy aVenue (near BLeury sTreeT) MonTreaL 514 904-8855 inQuire aBouT our uniQue LofTs wiTh 18-fooT ceiLinGs!
LePeterson.com
deliVerY summer 2016
SCI+TECH is looking for contributors!
Great at taking instagram shots? Contribute to photos at THE DAILY.
photos@mcgilldaily.com
2
Join the team at scitech@mcgilldaily.com.
News
February 1, 2016 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
3
Report finds McGill lacking in equity
Panel highlights resistance to implementing equitable hiring practices
Commitment to diversity The panelists questioned McGill’s – and more generally Canadian and U.S. universities’ – commitment to diversity. “We say things like ‘diversity is good’ but I’m not sure to what extent the University really believes that we are not excellent if we are not diverse,” said Blackett. “Since 2008, the percentage of Aboriginals and people with disabilities [who are McGill faculty] has actually declined,” explained Huang. Over the last eight years, the percentage of McGill faculty that identify as women has only increased by 1 per cent; the percentage that identify as ethnic minorities increased by 0.9 per cent, and the percentage that identify as visible minorities increased by 0.8 per cent.
“Taking seriously the challenge of inclusion is not just for the betterment of the universities, but it’s part and parcel of our responsibility to society at large.” Adelle Blackett, professor Intellectual erasure Blackett pointed to the links between the lack of diversity in faculty and the lack of academic space given to topics such as race, disability, and Indigeneity. “The ‘designated groups’ become measures of underinclusion, but also become measures of intellectual erasure,” she explained. Flanagan noted that McGill does not have a disability studies department, and as a result, McGill fails to “legitimize the experience and the
scholarship around disability, as they do at other universities.” “There exists the resistance to challenging a canon that we assume captures the highest level of academic expression, but that might actually be built on a really narrow range of expertise,” Blackett added. Huang and Korab’s report notes that “equity at McGill has largely focused on women (and by proxy, white women) as opposed to other identity categories.” This lack of academic diversity, the report said, “hinders creating a safe space for members of minority groups.” “The more I talk about these issues, the more I’m silenced, and the more I get a reputation as the ‘angry Asian woman with a chip on her shoulder,’” said Vang. “With diversity you have the chance to change and transform these cultures of silence, these cultures of denial.” Concrete implementation Huang explained that while conducting interviews for the report, she found “no one has a clear idea of their role in the entire implementation of the employment equity process. [...] There’s no documents that actually show how these practices are implemented at the university.” “In comparison to other universities [in Canada…] McGill doesn’t have any particular programs or even an official equity office apart from the SEDE [Social Equity and Diversity in Education] office, which doesn’t actually have the power to influence upper administration decision-making,” Huang added. “I think we need to be forced out of our comfort zone,” said Gaskin. “It could come from a strong leader at the top of the administration who says ‘this is my priority and this is what is going to happen.’” A Cognitive Science student, who attended the panel and preferred to remain anonymous, told The Daily that they felt the panelists and the University failed to clearly distinguish between affirmative action and more halfhearted hiring practices that do not account for differences. “I find I have a lot of questions as to the approaches that are taken [to] establish diversity, and also in the discussion in general it seemed like we were conflating diversity with anti-discrimination. I see those as separate questions which both have value – but without defining the values explicitly and by conflating the two, it can stunt progress,” the student said.
Action from within Blackett criticized the fact that the University needed encouragement from outside forces before it acted upon issues regarding equity. For instance, in 2013, Woo Jin Edward Lee, doctoral student and a course lecturer at the McGill School of Social Work, filed a human rights complaint against the University, accusing the school of systemic racism in its hiring practices. Later, in March 2015, another human rights complaint was filed against the University, this time by an employee in McGill’s Faculty of Medicine who was allegedly fired “without due notice or cause,” and had claimed ethnic discrimination and related psychological harassment. “Internal to institutions, we are very jealous of our academic freedom, and rightly so, but that makes it all the more incumbent on academic
institutions to take the challenge of diversity seriously and to take leadership on it, rather than to wait for external bodies like human rights tribunals to tell the University that it hasn’t actually been living up to its requirements,” said Blackett. “The inability to reflect internally the type of broader open society that we want to have externally is really a terrible predicament of academic institutions,” Blackett emphasized. “Taking seriously the challenge of inclusion is not just for the betterment of the universities, but it’s part and parcel of our responsibility to society at large.” More infographics on the findings of the report and a comparison of McGill’s employment equity status with that of five other Canadian universities are available online.
Percentages of “designated group” employees at McGill 2008 51.9% 0.4% Per cent
O
n January 28, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) held a panel discussion on “Diversity in Academia,” following the release of a report entitled “Equity in the Hiring of McGill Academic Staff: An Investigation,” acquired by The Daily on January 24, which discussed concerns with the state of McGill’s employment equity. In 2007, McGill Senate and Board of Governors ratified an Employment Equity Policy. Last May, the biennial review of the policy noted that since 2013 there has been “little change” in the proportional representation of “designated groups” within McGill faculty. The policy specifies six “designated groups”: Indigenous peoples, visible minorities, ethnic minorities whose mother tongue is neither English nor French, persons with disabilities, women, and persons of minority sexual orientations and gender identities. The panel began with Carolin Huang, one of the SSMU Equitable Hiring Researchers who wrote the report along with Molly Korab, a former Daily editor. Huang described their findings, which included a “lack of commitment, formalized practice, and transparency in regards to employment equity at McGill,” and a “lack of leadership from the upper administration on equity.” The panel comprised of four McGill faculty members: Tara Flanagan, associate professor in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology; Susan Gaskin, professor in the Department of Civil Engineering; Zoua Vang, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology; and Adelle Blackett, professor in the Faculty of Law.
McGill’s Employment Equity Policy states that “in its pursuit of employment equity it is understood that the University will not engage in reverse discrimination [or…] impose quotas.” Rather, its stated goal is “the enlargement of the pool of appropriately qualified candidates by encouraging applications from a broader range of persons.” “There’s a misperception that the pool of qualified minority candidates is just not there – that there are maybe one or two qualified minority faculty but then the rest of them are subpar,” countered Vang. “I think because of that misconception, university administrators and hiring committees go on with their ‘business as usual’ mentality and there isn’t effort to go out there and to recruit talented minority faculty.” Further, Vang noted that “there is this misperception that you can’t have racial diversity among faculty and still commit to academic excellence. And this idea that the two are incompatible is based on stereotypes that minority faculty are less qualified than white faculty,” she explained. Both before and after being hired, racialized candidates’ qualifications are viewed with “greater scrutiny and suspicion” by administrators, colleagues, and students than those of their white counterparts, Vang explained.
1.7% 23.5% 13.8%
2015 52.9% 0.3% Per cent
Saima Desai The McGill Daily
1.4% 24.4% 14.6%
KEEP UP WITH SPORTS? Want Your art published?
The sports section is looking for writers and an editor! sports@mcgilldaily.com
Illustrate for The Daily!
Illustrations@Mcgilldaily.com
McGill
DAILY L
The McGill Daily, Le Délit and The Link present
STUDENT JOURNALISM WEEK 2016
0 2 . B E F Y A D R U T A S O T 3 1 . B E S AT U R D AY F FEB. 13: Conférence hivernale de la presse francophone
C
French presentations by Judith Lachapelle (La Presse), and Rolan-Yves Carignan (Libération, The Gazette) followed by a panel discussion for members of the student press. 12:30-6:30 pm at Gert’s (Shatner). Admission: 5$
FEB. 15: Racism and the Media Workshop with Kim Milan. South Side Cafeteria (Shatner), 6:30-8:30 pm.
FEB. 16: Environmental Journalism (details TBA) FEB. 17: Feminist Approaches to Journalism (details TBA) FEB. 18: Investigative Journalism
Check our website for details: www.mcgilldaily.com
Panel with Henry Aubin, Linday Gyula, Marie-Maude Denis, and Vincent Larouche. South Side Cafeteria (Shatner), 6:30-8:30 pm.
FEB. 19: Arts Criticism With T’cha Dunlevy, Daniel Viola, Lorraine Carpenter, and Crystal Chan. Club Lounge, 6:00 pm.
FEB. 20: Making a Journalism Career With Kate McKenna, Eric Andrew-Gee, and Laurent Bastien Corbeil. Followed by a reception. More details TBA.
News
February 1, 2016 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
5
Continuing Education student group under scrutiny Upcoming elections reveal internal disputes
Ellen Cools The McGill Daily
I
n 2012, The Daily investigated severe governance issues at the McGill Association of Continuing Education Students (MACES). The Daily has recently received information from inside sources alleging that these problems were never fully addressed, and that transparency remains a major point of contention within the association. Recently, two MACES board members, VP Finance Ghassan Berro, and senator and non-voting member of McGill Board of Governors Nely Gaulea, resigned from their duties. As a result, MACES has called for early elections, the nomination period for which started on January 25, to fill these vacant positions. In an email to The Daily, Zaher Agha, MACES VP Internal, speaking on behalf of the MACES board of directors, stated that Berro resigned because he felt he could no longer commit his time to MACES and Gaulea resigned “due to personal reasons that [the board was] not made aware of.” When asked about the potential of continuing governance problems at MACES, Agha said, “MACES has been working hard to introduce a real change to the organization in order to improve services and increase transparency, therefore we had a plan that included major initiatives and reversals of previous decisions.” Lack of transparency In an interview with The Daily, a MACES insider, Leah*, emphasized that lack of transparency remains the major issue at MACES. According to her, the governance problems of 2012 have not been adequately addressed.
“We are genuinely concerned and are working hard to best represent those who have trusted us and elected us as representatives.” Leah*, inside source at MACES Leah provided an example of decision-making problems among the board members. According to
Rahma Wiryomartono | The McGill Daily her, in a meeting to decide whether to offer a Microsoft Excel course to students in the Fall or Winter semester, a majority of the board voted not to offer the course in the Fall semester. However, MACES President Sean Murphy, who still holds the position, “was pushing for it, [...] wanting to impress the school [and show] that he’s doing great stuff for students. [He was implying that] everyone on the board needs to vote for this, because the president will look bad if not,” Leah said. Ultimately the board came to a compromise that the course would be offered in the Fall semester on the condition that sufficient students signed up for it within a week. After a week, Murphy was to inform the other members of the result, in accordance with MACES bylaws, but Leah said this did not happen. “To this day, I don’t know […] if we had the number of registrations needed,” she said. The Daily reached out to Murphy for a comment, but was not able to acquire one. Trouble with reviewing bylaws A MACES Bylaw Review Committee was formed in September. According to Mike Simeon, a member of the committee, “As a group, I think we realized that the bylaws weren’t […] up to date, and they weren’t really comparable to [those of ] other student associations.”
Leah brought up another problem with the bylaws, regarding the VP Internal’s mandate to “take, prepare, and circulate minutes of all such meetings.”
“I really hope that there will be a change, but I don’t know how feasible that is.”
Mark*, inside source at MACES
The MACES website has a section to post meeting minutes but it has not yet been set up. According to Agha, “minutes are being taken at every meeting and are held in the office as per the bylaws […and] are presented to the audit firm at every financial year.” While the MACES bylaws do not stipulate how these minutes should be circulated, Leah maintains that as long as the meeting minutes are not posted on the website, students will be kept unaware of decisions that are being made. Julia*, another MACES insider who wished to remain anonymous, added that MACES was “trying to increase the awareness among students,” but it is still the case that not all students are aware of the association, as communication remains a problem. While Simeon believes that the establishment of a committee to review
the bylaws is a step in the right direction, he said that, so far, they have not rewritten the bylaws because of conflicts of interest with board members on the committee, as there were more board members than non-members on the committee. Simeon continued to explain that the conflict of interest was not an isolated instance, pointing to similar conflicts of interest. He gave an example of a committee meeting at which one member proposed auditing a document and hiring someone with special certifications to do so. The member added that it made sense and “it was a great way to show that we are transparent. But he proposed right after that he be the one to do that, since he’s certified,” said Simeon, noting the obvious conflict of interest. Improvements and future of MACES With the upcoming elections, there is hope that MACES will increase its transparency and solve these issues. Agha believes that MACES has greatly improved since 2012, especially now that there is a plan in place, reversing previous decisions with major initiatives. Such initiatives include relaunching the MACES website, creating a MACES Facebook page, revising the bylaws, creating Standard Operating Procedures documents, recreating the MACES Council, and initiating several new programs for students, in-
cluding a MACES scholarship and bursary program. In an email to The Daily, SSMU President Kareem Ibrahim said, “[MACES has] been great to work with and is making huge strides to improve. [...] They’ve been trying to run a referendum to opt-in to Student Services for a while now and are making plans to do it this semester.” Unlike in 2012, MACES now has representatives at Senate and other committee meetings, as well. Ollivier Dyens, Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) also told The Daily in an email, “We meet with MACES on a regular basis […] to address issues, challenges and projects.” Leah said, “We cannot deny that there is always room for improvement, and as [with] any other entity there [are] always some challenges that arise, but […] we are genuinely concerned and are working hard to best represent those who have trusted us and elected us as representatives.” With the recent resignations and three more board members finishing their terms this semester, elections will be very important for the association to move forward. But Leah and Mark*, another inside source, both expressed concern for the future board members. “I really hope that there will be a change, but I don’t know how feasible that is,” Mark said. * Names have been changed
6
News
February 1, 2016 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com
SNAX to see return of the sandwiches AUS Council approves Memorandum of Agreement
Marina Cupido The McGill Daily
A
t the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) Council meeting on January 27, documents were approved that could allow SNAX, the student-run shop on the ground floor of the Leacock building, to recommence selling sandwiches as early as this week. Councillors also approved a set of new electoral bylaws concerning the VP Finance position, and voted to endorse a “yes” vote in the referendum to increase the Students’ Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) non-opt-outable membership fee. SNAX is regulated through a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between McGill and AUS. The previous MOA expired on May 1, 2015, but the sale of sandwiches had been banned since November 2014, as it technically contravened the MOA.
“The Deputy Provost won’t be able to come down and say ‘Oh, that looks a little dirty, SNAX has to shut down.’” Jacob Greenspon, AUS President The administration had agreed informally to allow sandwiches to be sold, but reneged on its agreement for reasons that remain
unclear. This sparked considerable backlash from students, who staged a sit-in in March 2015 to protest the sandwich ban and highlight the increasing lack of affordable food options on campus. AUS has been negotiating with McGill since November 2014, hoping to renew the MOA and get sandwiches back on the menu at SNAX. Now, more than a year later, the negotiations have yielded results: two documents have been produced that could allow sandwich sales to resume as early as this week. The first, an updated MOA, will expire in April 2020. Except for a few minor adjustments, it is essentially the same as the previous one. The second is a letter of permission from Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens, which would allow SNAX to sell pre-packaged food items, such as sandwiches, as long as their suppliers are legally registered and follow appropriate labelling procedure. It also stipulates that SNAX must be subject to random health and safety inspections, and may not create a seating area of any kind. “This is a pretty thorny topic which we did have to compromise on,” President Jacob Greenspon said of the seating issue. “I don’t see why [the administration] would see that as a threat, but apparently they do. [...] Some plans in [the] past, which were to add [around] twenty seats to SNAX [...] aren’t really possible anymore.” However, Greenspon also explained that the AUS negotiating team had obtained a number of concessions from the administration. “Something we’ve got them to compromise [on] was that the only people that can be performing
AUS Council. inspections for health and safety [...] are inspectors who are [...] legally registered, and qualified to be able to do those inspections, so the Deputy Provost won’t be able to come down and say ‘Oh, that looks a little dirty, SNAX has to shut down.’” The letter of permission for food sales is strictly temporary, expiring in December 2016. If SNAX complies with its various conditions, however, the letter explains that it “may be extended at the University’s discretion on similar or modified conditions until the end of the MOA”. A number of councillors expressed concern at the vague nature of this statement. “It sounds like it’s at the University’s discretion, which
Marina Cupido | The McGill Daily means even if we do everything they say, they could hypothetically be like ‘just kidding, we’re not going to incorporate this into the MOA,’” said VP External Becky Goldberg. “Legally, yes,” said Greenspon. “But [...] if [we comply] with [these] conditions, after negotiating with us for 18 months, I think politically it would be very difficult for them to be restricting sandwich sales again, especially given the [...] demonstrations [...] that happened last year.” After a substantial discussion, councillors voted unanimously to approve the MOA and the letter of permission. In an email to The Daily, Greenspon explained that he and VP Finance Mirza
Ali Shakir will be meeting with Dyens and Dean of Arts Hudson Meadwell this week to officially ratify the documents, after which sandwich sales will resume as soon as possible. Other business discussed at Wednesday’s meeting included a motion to amend electoral bylaws for VP Finance screening, which has been discussed for several months and approved by an AUS referendum, and a motion to endorse a “yes” vote in last week’s referendum concerning an increase in SSMU’s membership fee. The first was approved unanimously, while the second passed by an extremely narrow margin, with 13 votes for, 11 against, and 12 abstaining.
Prisoner Correspondence Project raises awareness for incarcerated trans people
Collective holds movie screening for Trans Prisoner Day of Action and Solidarity George Ghabrial News Writer
O
n January 22, the Prisoner Correspondence Project (PCP) raised awareness as part of the Trans Prisoners Day of Action and Solidarity. Later that week, on January 26, PCP held an event at Café Ouvert which included screening a movie and reading from a zine written by a prisoner. This was the first year the day of solidarity has been held. The PCP aims to raise awareness around and give a voice to the challenges faced by trans prisoners, adopting an intersectional approach to incarceration and LGBTQ issues as a whole.
The PCP is a non-hierarchical, volunteer-run collective operating as a working group of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) Concordia. The PCP’s main initiative is a pen pal program between LGBTQ prisoners and the broader community. It also provides a resource library which includes reading materials that address questions regarding coming out while in prison, gender transitioning, and legal aid concerns. While some support programs do exist, the PCP aims to give voice to those who fall through the cracks. Its initiatives, such as the pen pal program, aim to connect the queer and trans community outside to those in prison, specifi-
cally connecting those imprisoned in the U.S. and Canada with people outside of prisons. The majority of pen-pal correspondents are from outside of the U.S.. Day of action and movie screening In an interview with The Daily, Parker Benley, who is a member of the PCP, said that the purpose of the day of action and the movie screening was two-fold. First, it served as a call for more pen pal program participants. Benley explained that currently there remains roughly 700 trans prisoners on the PCP’s waitlist looking to establish a correspondence. Secondly, the day of action aims to raise awareness on the
issue and garner further donations to the cause. As a result of finance issues – mainly due to the weakness of the Canadian dollar and their purchases of U.S. postage for their pen pals based in the U.S. – Benley said that the PCP will be launching a campaign for monthly donors in the next few weeks. Benley was optimistic about the event’s impact, and was pleased to see a full house during the movie screening and reading of PCP inside member Catherine Lynn Quick’s zine, A Caged Bird Sings. The day ended with a collection of contributions and many new pen pal signups. Benley expressed hope that the movement will grow and continue
to raise awareness of the harsh realities of imprisonment. According to Benley the day of action sought to “raise awareness of the things that we can change to alleviate the harm [experienced by trans prisoners].” Concretely, this would focus on the currently lacking healthcare provisions. Benley expressed hope that the event would amplify the discussion around prisons themselves, remarking, “prisons aren’t safe for anyone.” The PCP garners its main contributions from McGill’s and Concordia’s branches of QPIRG, as well as McGill’s Union for Gender Empowerment. While pleased with the level of campus support, Benley said that “more would be better.”
News
February 1, 2016 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
7
SSMU discusses student federations Anonymous source makes allegations against VP External
Cem Ertekin The McGill Daily
T
he Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Legislative Council met on January 28 to discuss the promise of joining one of the two emergent Quebec student federations that were formed in the past year, the Association pour la voix étudiante au Québec (AVEQ) and the Union étudiante du Québec (UEQ). In addition, Council approved several motions to ask a plebiscite question regarding the creation of a smoke-free campus, to adopt a set of messages regarding SSMU’s commitment to develop “harmonious relationships with the permanent residents of the Milton-Parc Community,” and to support a potential Indigenous leadership academy in the Royal Victoria Hospital. Further, Senate caucus representative David Benrimoh presented a report from the Accountability Committee, which included proposed regulations for the committee. Council decided to consider this report a notice of motion. As such, the regulations will be brought back to Council for consideration at the next meeting. Presentations by AVEQ and UEQ Speaking at Council, AVEQ’s internal coordinator Sofia Guerrieri and interim admin coordinator Ben Prunty explained that the organization’s core values were “democracy, solidarity, and equity.” “When we talk about democracy, we talk about a vision in which students are at the heart of the student movement and at the heart of our participatory decision-making process,” Guerrieri said. UEQ’s general coordinator Caroline Aubry and member of the coordinating committee Jonathan Mooney cited solidarity, transparency, accountability, collegiality, credibility, and local sovereignty as the core values of their organization, with a particular focus on local sovereignty. “If SSMU decides to affiliate in a certain way, if they follow their bylaws, that’s alright. If they want to disaffiliate, that’s their bylaws telling them how to do it. We won’t keep associations [against] their own will,” Aubry said. The main difference between the two federations remains the voting system and the fees. AVEQ utilizes a one-association-one-vote system, whereas UEQ uses a double majority system. In UEQ’s system, any motion is first voted on based on the one-association-one-vote system and then is approved through a semi-proportional system, where
SSMU Council. voting power is weighted based on the number of individual members represented by the association. Misperceptions of SSMU’s involvement in negotiations Following the federations’ presentations, during the discussion period regarding affiliation, Medicine representative Joshua Chin asked regarding SSMU’s experience with UEQ, “Going back to the early days of [UEQ], where members were signing their contracts in dedicating their involvement in this – we didn’t sign on. [...] My question was, was there any opportunity at a later date to sign on to this project?” When UEQ was first being formed, the student associations present were asked to sign a contract to dedicate their commitment to the project. Because this was in the summer, SSMU had chosen not to sign the contract. Chin asked, “Was there any opportunity at a later date to sign on to this project?” In response, Aubry said, “I think that would be a question for your executive team. I really don’t know because at any time any association can sign the contract.” Since last April, when the deliberations on the creation of these two federations began, SSMU VP External Emily Boytinck has been sitting at both tables. This course of action was approved by Council at previous meetings. Nevertheless, Chin expressed that he found it “disturbing” that a choice
Cem Ertekin | The McGill Daily to focus attention on a single federation was never brought up to Council. In response, Boytinck said, “We did have a question at Council. I asked very explicitly after my first presentation of the associations. There was a clicker vote which said, ‘Do you want me to continue sitting at both tables, just AVEQ, or just UEQ?’ And there was a clicker vote which overwhelmingly said to stay at both tables.” Leaked report leads to allegations Chin brought up certain allegations regarding a “lack of transparency” in Boytinck’s involvements with the two federations that was brought to his attention via a Facebook message sent by an anonymous source who is neither a McGill student nor affiliated with either of the two student federations. According to Boytinck, this person had sent some of the councillors an unpublished report in French, drafted by the Federation étudiante de l’Université de Sherbrooke (FEUS), which has decided to leave the negotiation table of AVEQ. The FEUS report alleged that SSMU, and therefore Boytinck, were being biased toward AVEQ, despite being directly involved in both federations. The report characterizes this as “problematic.” According to the report, AVEQ had hired a general coordinator, who was then placed on SSMU payroll. Because of the large size of SSMU, the association has more flexibility when it comes to adding or removing
individuals from its payroll. Thus, the AVEQ coordinator was allegedly placed on the SSMU payroll, though they were actually being paid by the Concordia Student Union (CSU) and L’Association générale des étudiant(e)s de l’Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (AGE UQTR).
“If there was an issue I would have hoped that [councillors] would have brought that up five months ago.” Emily Boytinck, SSMU VP External “We feel deeply disturbed by this manner of doing things, because it seems that SSMU could proceed with hiring an employee for a provincial association without keeping its members up to date. [...It was done] in a biased manner to one of these two [student federation projects],” the report said in French. The report also accused SSMU of doing translations internally for AVEQ, but not for UEQ. The report said, “We consider it an injustice that translation expenses were assured by CSU and SSMU internally, only for AVEQ.”
Details of the FEUS report were discussed in a confidential session, minutes from which are yet to be made public. In an interview with The Daily, Boytinck explained that she believed that none of her actions were out of order and that she had reported on all these matters in her previous reports to Council. Boytinck said, “It was [...] sort of a slanderous accusation of an association trying to make drama out of this – ‘CSU and SSMU did translation internally!’ and there was no secretiveness behind that, although our translation budgets should be open.” Boytinck also said that when she first heard about these allegations, she sent an email to councillors. Regarding the allegations, Boytinck said, “These [allegations] are true, but I reported on them. So if there was an issue I would have hoped that [councillors] would have brought that up five months ago. And all I’ve been doing is attempting to work on both associations [...and] that’s what [Council has] been telling me to do this whole time.” On February 11, Council will decide which of the two federations should appear on a referendum question, which will be posed during the referendum period between March 7 and 18. An earlier version of this article was published online and was updated following the proceedings at Council.
8
News
February 1, 2016 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
Race Project’s first semester sees issues of execution Suggested improvements include rigorous attendance system
Xavier Richer Vis News Writer
R
ace Project, a mandatory workshop for first-year students in McGill residences that addresses racism and colonialism, is in its first semester of full implementation. The workshop discusses white privilege and microaggressions, debunks the myth of reverse racism, and educates students on Canada’s colonial history. Race Project is modelled on Rez Project, a similarly structured workshop about consent, gender, and sexuality that has been in effect since September 2013. Rez Project has recently come under scrutiny for its white-centric focus, and Race Project was designed to rectify this lack of intersectionality.
“If you had attended the Race Project training, you would know that the content is not neutral.” Jenny Zhang, Race Project facilitator
In an interview with The Daily, Jenny Zhang, a second-year student and Race Project facilitator, explained that “since first-years come from a lot of different backgrounds, we’re trying to give everyone a base level of knowledge on these anti-oppression topics in order to hopefully make rez a safer space.” Race Project workshops are approximately three hours long, and are led by two trained facilitators: one Black, Indigenous, or Person of Colour (BIPOC) facilitator, and one white facilitator. Tristan*, a facilitator, told The Daily that students in certain faculties could complete their academic career at McGill without ever having a single conversation about race. As a result, he said, students may never address their own prejudice or lack of knowledge. Issues with implementation Tristan told The Daily that a floor fellow, who did not undergo Race Project training, shut down a Race Project workshop early because they thought that the facilitators were being “too aggressive.” According to Tristan, the floor fellow felt that the content was being
A message board in New Rez, where events including Race Project are advertised. delivered in a “non-neutral” manner. This has led to accusations that certain floor fellows are too involved during the course of the workshop, hence not allowing students to honestly and safely discuss the topics. “If you had attended the Race Project training, you would know that the content is not neutral. It’s explicitly expressed that the project is anti-colonialism, anti-racism,” Malika*, an Upper Rez floor fellow, told The Daily. “The floor fellow shutting [the workshop] down is not a reflection on the project,” Malika continued, but rather reflects the different perspectives and levels of training of floor fellows.
“People were writing actual racial slurs on the board.”
Rayna*, Race Project facilitator But the missteps were not solely on the part of some floor fellows. Another floor fellow, Rayna*, said that in another workshop students had used racial slurs as examples during the workshop, making other participants highly uncomfortable. “There’s a part of the workshop where you’re supposed to use a diagram to show a visible outcome of rac-
ism, how racism occurs, and its systemic roots. You’re just supposed to write ‘racial slur’ as a visible outcome. People were writing actual racial slurs on the board,” Rayna explained. Identities inform inquiry Because Race Project is mandatory, facilitators must work with a wide variety of students with differing backgrounds, experiences, and levels of knowledge. “You’ve got some students who can be really quiet and unwilling to participate, some who can be rather aggressively combative when they don’t agree with the things you’re saying, and some who really appreciate the workshop and learn a lot from it,” said Zhang. “These are pretty emotionally intense subjects,” Zhang continued. “We talk about [the] history of residential schools [and] white privilege, so it’s pretty expected for students to express strong feelings. It’s our job as facilitators to keep discussions from getting too off track and/or becoming really triggering for those involved or in the group.” “A huge red flag topic for us was the section that dealt with reverse racism and how it’s really not a thing,” said Zhang. “Even previously quieter students, who are generally white, would often start to argue that people can be racist against any race, including white people. It can be hard to get students to understand
Sonia Ionescu | The McGill Daily
on the first try why historical power relations are still so deeply ingrained and relevant in the modern world and our current cultural context.”
“This is not an issue for only the Black, Indigenous students. White students can’t sit outside and think, ‘this isn’t about me.’”
Charmaine Nelson, professor
In an interview with The Daily, Charmaine Nelson, a McGill Art History professor and currently the only female Black art history professor in Canada, also emphasized that it is essential to engage students in discussions of race and colonialism. Nelson said, “Racial diversity is as important as gender [and sexuality] diversity in the context of a university, as your questions can only come from your identity.” “So the fact that I’m asking different questions than people who came before me is because I’m a Black woman of a certain identity group, who’s interested in getting certain answers,” Nelson continued.
“There’s been generations of white male scholars before me who haven’t asked certain questions because they’re not interested, for example, in the humanization of the American slave. It should be made clear to students that [having these discussions] should be a given. This is not an issue for only the Black, Indigenous students. White students can’t sit outside and think, ‘this isn’t about me,’” she concluded. Mandatory attendance When asked what could be done to improve Race Project in the future, one common concern from floor fellows and facilitators alike was attendance. “I think there should be a more rigorous attendance system, as not all floor fellows get 100 per cent attendance,” Rayna said. “Because Race Project is not technically part of a resident’s lease, we can’t force them to come, and yet the project is sold as mandatory. So maybe it should be incorporated into residency leases.” “We have to get the conversation started somehow, and hopefully at least a handful of the students we teach Race Project to will be interested in learning more about these topics on their own,” Zhang said. The Daily reached out to McGill Rez Life office but did not receive a response in time for publication. *Names have been changed.
Commentary
February 1, 2016 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
9
Careless care
McGill Mental Health Service left me without a plan
Michael Han | Illustrator Anna Pearson Commentary Writer
M
y greatest fear has always been asking for help. The prospect of vulnerability terrifies me, and I believed that asking for help would be the hardest part of my mental health journey. However, I was continuously proven wrong, instead learning that accessing the right kind of help is exponentially more difficult. My fear of vulnerability did not keep those closest to me from seeing that something was wrong. Before university, I spent most of my life keeping myself distracted; I was a busy kid and pushing myself to perfection. This constant preoccupation provided me with an outlet that enabled me to conceal that I had a mental illness. For years, it felt like my condition was just the norm, and I repeatedly convinced myself that it was all simply ‘in my head.’ The stressful and fast-paced environment of university life forced me to acknowledge the truth of my illness. I could no longer display the facade of ‘perfection’ – following my first year, I considered dropping out altogether. But I couldn’t stand the notion of being viewed as weak, and so I continued to suppress my mental illness and pursued my studies as usual. Last year, my own version of rock bottom forced me to enter the McGill Counselling Service and finally come to terms with this part of myself. After spending an hour with a counsellor, I had been made
to face a long list of negatives in my life. I was given an exam deferral letter, but encouraged not to use it; the counsellor didn’t seem to understand the severity of my situation, and solely focused on whether or not I could “pass the class” rather than on mitigating my major depressive episode.
I am ready to confront and overcome the challenges this illness poses in my life, but frankly MMHS has never provided me with that opportunity. In the following months I spent most of my days sleeping or crying. I lacked the energy to concentrate even on basic conversation, and I began isolating myself from my family and friends. I lost my appetite, which was a major contributing factor to me shrinking to under 100 pounds. I was acutely aware that I was losing control of my once seemingly perfect life. The only consistent thought I had was wondering how far this needed to go in order for someone to notice that I needed help. The answer, it turns out, was quite far. It wasn’t until spending a lot of time with my mother that
summer that I was encouraged to see a psychiatrist for what had become an emergency situation. Fourth year came with a new diagnosis: clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder. I was put on an antidepressant and referred to the McGill Mental Health Service (MMHS), where I was set up with bi-weekly check-ups with a psychiatrist and weekly appointments with a psychologist. This should have been a helpful, positive experience, yet both of these relationships felt far from authentic. It felt like first year all over again – I was just another number. For the first time, I was divulging some of my darkest secrets to someone, and more often than not, it was as if the therapist sitting across the room wasn’t even present. My appointments appeared to serve the sole purpose of ensuring I hadn’t hurt myself and did not intend to do so. After a year of trying to establish and foster a two-sided relationship with my caregivers at MMHS, I stopped going to my weekly psychologist appointments, only using the services for monthly five-minute exchanges about prescriptions with a psychiatrist. In a way, this isn’t all that surprising. MMHS becomes crowded with students seeking exam deferrals and other forms of quick documentation, so student mental health care is a one-stop solution for many. Unfortunately, this process carries over and affects those in need of long-term treatment. Students seeking help beyond academic accommodations become overshadowed,
their illnesses dismissed with suggestions of short-term fixes. University creates a high-risk environment for those experiencing, or likely to experience, mental illness. This competitive and highpressure academic setting tends to blur the fine line that exists between a mental illness and regular (though sometimes intense) stress, but MMHS professionals should know that the two cases must be treated differently. While stress can be a precursor to depression, it is generally only temporary, coming and going, and often linked to major life events. Depression, on the other hand, is all-consuming. It leaves one feeling unhappy even when everything in their life is going just right.
As I walked out of MMHS for the last time, I had to acknowledge the harsh truth: I was no longer their problem. Yet, no one ever followed up with me when I stopped going to therapy. No one was responsible for me – and this type of safety net is essential to anyone suffering from a severe mental illness. When I was faced with major depressive episodes, I was no longer afraid of asking for help; rather, I was afraid of what professional help would actually entail.
This December, I had my final appointment with the psychiatrist at MMHS. Despite my less than positive experiences in the past, I was hoping they would be able to point me toward mental health care options to help me do well after graduation. I was instructed to contact my local community service centre (CLSC), given a six-month prescription for antidepressants, and simply told, “good luck.” I left with no plan, and once again, experienced the feeling of being left to fend for my own illness. This is a scenario that is detrimental to the well-being of someone with a mental illness, for whom routine and support are vital. As I walked out of MMHS for the last time, I had to acknowledge the harsh truth: I was no longer their problem. During my time at McGill, I have come to terms with my mental illness. I am ready to confront and overcome the challenges this illness poses in my life, but frankly MMHS has never provided me with that opportunity. On the verge of graduation, I am leaving with an immense amount of gratitude for the support system I fostered here at McGill. Unfortunately, MMHS will never be a part of this support system. It was not their services that helped me overcome my darkest times, but the friends and family who selflessly took responsibility for my well-being and continue to stand by me through it all. Anna Pearson is a U4 Kinesiology student. To contact her, email anna.pearson@mail.mcgill.ca.
10
Commentary
February 1, 2016 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com
Policing the racial hierarchy The violence of slave patrols continues today
Nadir Khan Shadows of Slavery
L
ast April, Walter Scott, a Black man, fled from white police officer Michael Slager through an abandoned lot on Rivers Avenue in North Charleston, South Carolina. Slager chased Scott and shot him eight times, killing him. Like many Black Americans before him, Scott was chased and killed by a legal entity supposedly sworn to serve and protect. Scott’s murder – which took place roughly 11 miles from the location of an 18th century slave auction gallery – is one of many that tug at the deep roots of violent and racist policing in the U.S.. It traces back to the era of slave patrols – an era when groups of armed white men on horseback enforced a system of surveillance, terror, and racial control over enslaved people. Policing today retains striking similarities to the slave patrol era. 326 years before the murder of Scott, the South Carolina slave code of 1690 gave birth to the slave patrol. Grounded in what legal historian Sally Hadden refers to as “an unequivocal manifestation of white fear” that enslaved people would revolt at any moment, the slave patrol was one of the first formal state institutions in slave societies around the Atlantic. Patrols roamed country roads and plantations by night, looking for potential fugitive slaves and searching the living quarters of enslaved people for contraband goods like liquor or books.
“Policing in [the U.S.] has always had the dual purpose of maintaining social order and enforcing the racial hierarchy.” Salim Muwakkil, journalist Crucial to the slave patrol enterprise was the pass system. Patrollers, or “paddyrollers” as termed by enslaved people, had the power to stop and question a slave for any reason, especially
Marina Djurdjevic | The McGill Daily if the latter was travelling without a white person accompanying them. A pass document signed by a master or overseer typically indicated the enslaved person’s business and provided safe passage. Though the pass system was at times subverted by literate slaves who could forge their own passes, it ultimately represented complete control over the bodies and mobility of the vast majority of enslaved people. Although the physical policing of enslaved bodies was integral to upholding slavery, the deep psychological effect of slave patrols played an additional role. Slave patrols travelled on horseback, and were thus physically placed above eye level. They represented an omnipresent force with sweeping authority conferred by law, which allowed for extensive searches of the person and personal spaces. The darkness of the night took on new meaning as the potential threat of danger was always present anywhere beyond the plantation. In this way, the power of slave patrols exerted itself even in spaces where they were not present.
Journalist Salim Muwakkil writes that “policing in [the U.S.] has always had the dual purpose of maintaining social order and enforcing the racial hierarchy.” Muwakkil’s analysis of policing can also be extended to other contexts. For instance, a pass system in Western Canada, put into place in 1885 and lasting for sixty years, confined Indigenous people to reserves, with the goal of stifling access to urban areas and communication with other Indigenous communities. Indigenous people were required to have a pass indicating the reason and duration of the person’s absence approved by the colonial Indian agent on the reserve. Decades later, racist discriminatory policing is alive and well in major Canadian cities. The practice of carding is a hallmark of Toronto police, whereby individuals, primarily of colour, are stopped and questioned on the street, without charge, and asked for identification that is then entered into a database. The racist policing of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) is also well documented. An internal SPVM report compiled by crimi-
nologist Mathieu Charest in the wake of the 2008 police murder of teenager Freddy Villanueva in Montreal North, outlined the extent to which racism was entrenched within the Montreal police. Among incidents cited in the report are officers telling people of colour to “go back to your country,” or even that “we prefer to be colonizers than slaves.” In the U.S., police brutality is rampant. The recent deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, and so many others are only a fraction of a long line of police murders in the country’s past. Slave patrols not only perpetuated white supremacy, but functioned more specifically to protect the economic interests of the propertied elite, which was then the slaveholding class. Police today continue to brutally carry out the latter role in addition to the former. In Montreal, police consistently use excessive force against explicitly anti-capitalist demonstrators who threaten the current economic system, for instance during protests against tuition hikes or austerity policies,
Send a letter to the editor! up to 400 words
letters@mcgilldaily.com
as well as during the city’s yearly marches against police brutality. What are we to do with this understanding of law enforcement’s past? History does not prescribe a course of action to take, but what is clear is that when state entities are granted vast authority to profile, surveil, and inflict violence upon certain groups of people, a dangerous structural power imbalance is created. It is an imbalance that is difficult to overcome despite the most thorough forms of oversight and accountability. All this is aggravated by the fact that police forces in both Canada and the United States are becoming increasingly militarized with sophisticated weaponry and equipment despite dropping crime rates. As we move forward, an awareness of the police’s past can help us move toward a better understanding of what their future role should be instead. Shadows of Slavery is a column that seeks to remember the history of slavery in the Americas and to examine how this history manifests itself today. Nadir Khan can be reached at shadowsofslavery@ mcgilldaily.com.
Commentary
February 1, 2016 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
11
When disconnect turns deadly
Misguided cuts have not fixed Quebec’s healthcare bureaucracy Jeeventh Kaur Commentary Writer
A
s Canadians, we are as proud of our healthcare as we are of our hockey. Any display of Canadian nationalism is hardly complete without allusion to our “free,” “universal” system, especially when making comparisons to our neighbour south of the border. Unfortunately, the clear reality is that our healthcare isn’t as good as we’d like to believe. Lapses in patient care do occur – and they have terrifying consequences. On November 2, Mark Blandford died of a ruptured aneurysm after the administration at St. Mary’s Hospital unilaterally decided to transfer him to another facility, despite having the means to perform potentially life-saving surgery. As Quebec is swept by austerity measures, many cite budget cuts as the underlying reason for Blandford’s death. It is true that the hospital has been ordered to slash $11.1 million in expenses since last May, and this trend has echoed across the country. In Ontario, the government is moving to cut costs by extending hospital budget freezes and lowering physician fees. In Nova Scotia, 19 community groups that receive financial support from the Nova Scotia Department of Health and Wellness have seen their funding reduced by almost a quarter. However, though decreases in funding undeniably exacerbate is-
sues in the system, the problem isn’t really that we don’t spend enough money on healthcare: a 2014 study by the Commonwealth Fund ranked Canada’s healthcare system second-last overall out of 11 nations, even though we shell out almost $1,000 more per capita than the UK, which had the highest ranked healthcare system. In Quebec, a 2010 estimate put the ratio of administrators and primary care staff at 1 to 1. This apparent inefficiency has not been far from the provincial government’s mind. Last year, Bill 10, a piece of healthcare reform legislation, was passed and implemented. The bill – largely introduced as a cost-saving measure for the austere government – reorganized hospital groupings and centralized decision-making powers in each regional administrative unit. Yet, Blandford’s death suggests that the healthcare system remains both poorly structured and poorly managed, leading to the kinds of inefficiencies that cost lives. As a result of Bill 10, the province is currently divided up into sectors, each of which falls under the umbrella of a regional administrative organization. St. Mary’s, for example, falls under the West Island Integrated University Health and Social Services Centre, known as the CIUSSS de l’Ouest de l’Île de Montréal in French. Unfortunately, the new structure has brought its own host of
problems. The increasingly centralized nature of the healthcare system, while perhaps removing some middlemen, still has a substantial bureaucracy in which administrators are often too far removed from the medical practitioners to be able to make effective decisions, allowing circumstances like those at St. Mary’s to arise. François Béland, an associate professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Montreal, predicted in the Huffington Post that Bill 10 would create a bureaucracy-ridden healthcare system in Quebec, where administrative micromanagement would undermine local decision-making structures. It appears that Béland was not far off the mark. In fact, a surgeon capable of performing the necessary surgery was present at the hospital at the time Blandford’s condition was discovered. However, the doctor was powerless to help because his privileges to do so had been revoked under the new administration, which had deemed this type of vascular surgery “eccentric to the mission” of the hospital. A system in which the doctors themselves aren’t making the calls about what happens to patients is, undoubtedly, a poor one. The short-sighted attempt to remove bureaucratic inefficiencies through budget cuts has given rise to new, easily avoidable inefficiencies due to the disconnect between administrators and practitioners. Because of the way that the regions
Sonia Ionescu | The McGill Daily are split up, and the poor communication between them, Blandford was to be sent to a West Island Hospital thirty minutes away from St. Mary’s – even though the Jewish General Hospital was only half a kilometre away, a stone’s throw in comparison. In the case of a ruptured aneurysm, where every minute counts, this type of inefficiency is both unacceptable and unsustainable. The financial cost for a broken system is no small one, either. While the Quebec Medical Association estimated that inefficiencies in the provincial healthcare system cost taxpayers upwards of $5 billion in 2013, studies have shown that mergers and consolidation in the healthcare sector do not necessarily save money and often come with large,
unanticipated costs. The evidence is simply not on Bill 10’s side in terms of the cost or effectiveness of the reforms it has brought. Evidently, massive reform is required in order to prevent situations like that at St. Mary’s from arising again in the future. Reform, of course, starts with the acknowledgement that the healthcare system is flawed – not necessarily because we don’t pour enough money into it, but rather, because each dollar gets tangled in bureaucracy and administration, serving only to harm the very patients the system is meant to help. Jeeventh Kaur is a U0 Management student. To contact her, email jeeventh.kaur@mail.mcgill.ca.
Seize the COPportunity
The Paris agreement is an important step, but Canada must take meaningful action Victor Frankel Commentary Writer I may be a relentless optimist, but I think something amazing happened in Paris several weeks ago: 196 nations ratified a climate agreement that bids adieu to the era of fossil fuels. But my optimism is cautious: I recognize that the Paris agreement is not a solution in itself, but really just a springboard for action – a huge deposit of political capital for this major transition into a leaner, cleaner, and greener future. An unprecedented level of global cooperation was displayed in Paris; it now remains to keep our leaders accountable and translate the promises into action. The Paris deal is not perfect: it falls short of any concrete mechanism to commit countries to specific emissions reductions. Despite this limitation, the Paris agreement for the first time sets a new goal to reach zero CO2 emissions in the
second half of this century. In doing so, this international agreement sends a powerful signal to global energy markets and investors, underscoring the urgency of the need to transition our economies and our infrastructure away from fossil fuels. If McGill’s Board of Governors and its investment fund managers have been taking note, they should know by now that it’s a good idea to divest from fossil fuels before they become totally stranded assets. In both developed and emerging economies, we can already see that the sense of urgency to transition away from fossil fuels has been heightened by the adoption of the Paris agreement. For example, the U.S. recently announced a moratorium on new leases for coal mines on federal land. In similar fashion, China, the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal, has placed a moratorium on new coal mines and has announced that more than 1,000 coal
mines will close in the coming year. The Paris talks also give hope for Canada. Many climate justice advocates in Canada were pleased when the new Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna announced that Canada would support the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This was a key development in the Paris talks, as this more ambitious target provides a buffer below the 2 degree Celsius limit, beyond which a runaway greenhouse effect would likely have a catastrophic impact on Earth’s climate and ecosystems. Further, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, McGill’s newly minted favourite son, promised on the campaign trail to reform the review process for pipelines to include considerations of climate impact and community concerns. While the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline review process began two
weeks ago under the same process that was put in place by the Harper government, McKenna and Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr announced last week that the review would be extended, and an interim review process would be implemented instead to consider climate impact and to consult more extensively with Indigenous communities. Keeping Trudeau to his word did not happen on its own: it was a consequence of public outrage at the fact that these proceedings were being conducted without the promised reforms. But the Liberal government is still a long way from McKenna’s promise to tackle climate change with determination. There is so far little sign that this government will reduce Canada’s dependence on tar sands development, which is entirely incompatible with any serious program to reduce carbon emissions on a national level. Despite the changes in the pipeline
review process, the ultimate goal of moving tar sands from landlocked Alberta and Saskatchewan to export markets remains the same. This is not progressive leadership, and we should be able to expect more of Trudeau than him keeping his head buried in the (tar) sands like the last prime minister did. It’s important that Canadians continue to put pressure on their government and hold it to its mandate to right the wrongs of the previous one. Canada must move past the era of fossil fuels and nurture the growth of a renewable energy economy. With crisis comes opportunity, and Trudeau must seize this opportunity to reclaim Canada’s place on the world stage as a leader on climate change. We demand it – because it’s 2016. Victor Frankel is a Masters student in Biology and a member of Divest McGill. To contact him, email victor.frankel@mail.mcgill.ca.
What’s hair got to do with it? BY Niyousha Bastani and Melis Çağan Melis I think back to my first memories of my unibrow and moustache, which involve my mother and a pair of tweezers. Because my mom made sure no one would ever see it, I was never bullied in school for my facial hair. When I started fourth grade, this began to include leg and armpit hair, and she took me to my very first waxing session. Sometimes not talking about it can be just as powerful as talking about it. When my mom didn’t mention my moustache and leg hair during my last visit, I could tell she was trying really hard not to. This was confirmed as we were saying goodbye at the airport, when she asked me, “Did you notice that I didn’t comment at all this time?” She had made it until the very last second, but still couldn’t stop herself from saying something. And when I think about it, I think I’d feel weird if she hadn’t said anything. It’s her own way of showing that she cares about me, even if I don’t follow her advice all the time. I find it strange that hair removal is never framed as a beauty issue. According to my mom it’s a hygiene issue, according to bosses it’s about professionalism.
Niyousha Before moving to Vancouver from Tehran at nine, I’d never thought twice about my eyebrows. But “unibrow” was one of the first words I added to my small English vocabulary when I started school soon after. I immediately sensed that this word was dirty, something to be ashamed of. I cried for my mom to “fix” my eyebrows. She did, and waxed my legs too, though she said it was “too early.” My facial and body hair introduced me to xenophobia, and it took me years to unlearn my hatred of it. I moved to Canada two years after George W. Bush had placed Iran in the axis of evil. I turned 11 the year the infinitely racist film 300 told my classmates all about Iranians. I didn’t wear shorts from fear of being called a Muslim monkey again. In seventh grade, when friends debated whether refusing to shave their legs was admirable feminist resistance, I suspected that few were wondering whether this choice would invite questions like “Is your dad a terrorist?” Fast forward 12 years: when I went home for winter break this year, my mother was revolted by the hair on my legs. “Aren’t you embarrassed?” Oddly enough, now that I’m old enough for my body hair to worry her, it no longer disgusts me. I conceded to having the hair that I’ve learned to no longer hate – though not yet quite love – waxed off, but only because my mom’s horror didn’t seem quite worth resisting.
VISUAL BY ALICE SHEN
Features
February 1, 2016 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
13
Introduction When we, the authors, first chatted about facial and body hair, it was to talk about the early deaths of our unibrows – may they rest in peace. We discovered that we were both very young when we had our mothers pluck our unibrows, that we both have fairly hairy arms, and that we both have a lot to say about the taboo topics of body and facial hair. Facial hair and body hair are rarely talked about openly or analytically, even though most people have quite a few feelings and experiences when it comes to these topics. Whether you avoid razors like the plague or shave every day, you probably have some feelings about your hair. We wanted to uncover some of these feelings that social norms try to tuck away.
Hair versus family For a lot of people, their first experience of consciousness of their facial and body hair involved their parents. Families often embody, and thus entrench, normative conceptions of what is ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine.’ This gendered understanding of what kind of bodies are acceptable can come from the passing down of traditions, but can also apply extreme pressure to fit certain ideals. When we asked Mariam* about her first memories tied to body hair, she recalled hating that her mom didn’t teach her how to shave like her friends’ moms. “Growing up around white people, they all had little hair like peach fuzz... I was the only one who had black hair that was visible. One time I was going to this party wearing a dress and I wanted to remove my leg hair but my mom advised me differently.” She said that at the time this frustrated her, “but now I understand what [my mom] was trying to do, and really appreciate it.” Facial hair also created an intergenerational bond for Mariam. She explained, “My mom, me, and my grandma all have the same eyebrow shape, which in a weird way connects us somehow. This has been important to me especially since my grandma died.” For others we interviewed, the removal of body hair created familial bonds through the practice of rituals. Dana explained that shaving was “handed down” to her through other women in her family. “I started growing hair in my armpits and someone said, ‘here’s a razor, this is how you do it...’ it was just something that you did as a woman, a ritual of womanhood.” But family can also be a source of pressure when it comes to hair removal firsts. Nadine said that she didn’t really care about her “hairy legs” when she was 13, but her mom insisted that she get them waxed. “There might have been many tears involved,” Nadine admitted. While hair removal was presented and perceived as a natural rite of passage for many women we interviewed, it was a source of conflict for Batu and his family. He talked about being the first boy to grow hair on his legs in school and secretly shaving with his dad’s razor to not feel different. “In a few weeks, when my hair reached the stage where shaving wasn’t doing any good anymore, my parents understood what was happening. They called me aside and questioned me. ‘Why are you doing this?’ ‘You should be proud to show your hair.’” He said that the patriarchal and “masculinity-centred lectures” that he received from his family informed how much his hair shaped his perception of himself and made it even harder to “make peace with” changes in his body.
Hair versus the patriarchy Family is just one of many channels through which hair norms rooted in patriarchy are instilled. For some of the people we interviewed, the pressure to remove hair at a young age came from kids of the same age
who had learned the rules of patriarchy early on and begun to act as enforcers. The patriarchal rules we are expected to follow take different forms and exert themselves with varying forcefulness on different identities, influenced by factors such as race, gender, and sexuality. However, no one is fully immune to an external pressure to conform. These norms tell us from an early age how much hair we can acceptably have on our bodies to be considered ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine.’ Rhiannon recalled playing in the forest when she was 12 and running into a group of girls from a neighbouring elementary school. “I hadn’t shaved my armpits all winter and the hair was quite long. They kept trying to get me to lift my arms up, actually to the point of grabbing my arms and forcing them above my head so they could laugh at my armpit hair,” Rhiannon said, adding that she “shaved very diligently after that.” For Kateryna, too, anxiety about shaving began when she was twelve and was incited by friends who thought she didn’t look “feminine enough.”
“I wish I could say I always wear my misstache proudly, that I roll my sleeves up to let the little hairs growing back in on my arm bask in the sun, that I never brush my bangs over my unibrow. There are those days where I’ll be [...] laughing along with the comments meant to degrade me.” Arîn a creator of the Middle Eastern Feminist Facebook page Not feeling “feminine enough” with body hair was something shared by almost all the women we spoke to. Nadine said that keeping her body “as hairless as possible” feels like an “obligation.” She only feels comfortable with her physical appearance when she is hairless, which she thinks has to do with growing up as a “stereotypically hairy Arab kid in a society where Eurocentric beauty standards are idealized.” According to Irene, hairlessness as a beauty standard stems from the ideal of “‘woman’ as this perfect, pure thing that doesn’t have any imperfections, because I guess you could see hair as an imperfection.”
Arîn, one of the two creators of the Middle Eastern Feminist Facebook page, also talked about the way in which norms are enforced on her body hair using various discourses in different public spaces. “When I was homeless, case managers read my progress and compliance with programs partly through my bodily presentation and how well groomed I appeared. When I was working food, it was about ‘hygiene.’ When I was working retail, the regulation of my body and facial hair was a matter of ‘showing customers respect.’ And when I landed an internship in policy research and communication, showing as little body and facial hair as possible was a matter of ‘professionalism,’” Arîn said.
Hair versus ME Despite our understandings of body and facial hair being inextricably intertwined with societal norms, the internalization of these norms can lead to a battle with our own bodies. Sometimes the voice in our own head judges us more loudly and harshly than the voices around us. Other times, it refutes the norms and tells us we don’t have to fight our bodies. Nadia talked about how her perception of her own facial hair is often exaggerated. “I’ll be like, ‘oh my god my beard is growing,’ and other people will be like, ‘I don’t see anything,’ and there’s me sitting in the bathroom with a magnifying glass being like, ‘oh my god, I’m Gandalf.’” But despite finding her hair frustrating at times, Nadia doesn’t “want it gone forever.” She feels an attachment to it, explaining that “it kind of adds to who I am.” Saima said that for her, “even the words ‘body hair’ are evocative of revulsion.” At the same time, she has recently stopped shaving and likes “being reminded” that her “body is organic.” She said, “It’s kind of fun waking up in the morning and being like, ‘wow, look at how much you’ve grown!’ [It’s] like seeing your body as a plant: it grows and has this immutable essence that expresses itself and it expands into space in a way that is wonderful and generative.” Arîn echoed a similar feeling of ambivalence and internal conflict. “I wish I could say I always wear my misstache proudly, that I roll my sleeves up to let the little hairs growing back in on my arm bask in the sun, that I never brush my bangs over my unibrow. There are those days where I’ll be [...] laughing along with the comments meant to degrade me – living my gender/ sex ‘failure’ to the fullest and feeling blissful; telling the world, ‘I know the rules but my body at its most natural state gives the rules the finger.’” But on other days, Arîn feels like hiding, or feels caught and exposed in the outside world. She explained feeling “vulnerable to too many strangers who, at any moment, will out me as the perennial witch. And they do.” For Batu, the reason for a similar sense of vulnerability was the overlap between the changes in his body during puberty and the beginning of his explor-
14
Features
February 1, 2016 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com
ing his queer identity. He said, “Just as I was understanding this queer identity, my body began bravely exhibiting itself without asking me. My queer identity and my body’s exhibition of masculinity were in a constant conflict.” He said that it was only after starting university that he became more comfortable with his body and facial hair. “When I see my face or body in the mirror now, I know that there is no conflict anymore.”
Hair versus RACE Aside from expectations of masculinity and femininity, the criteria for how acceptable a body is in terms of the amount of hair it grows also depends on racial prejudices. These expectations can be enforced by white people on people of colour, but can also be enforced within communities of colour. Too much or too little hair can lead to fetishization, public scrutiny, and even body policing by the literal police. Despite feeling empowered when growing out her hair, Saima also emphasizes that not shaving as a racialized person is a radically different experience than not shaving as a white person. Conforming to body norms can be a survival mechanism for racialized people and refuting the norm is doubly threatening. Saima talked about how, as an Indian woman, she gets treated differently when she doesn’t shave. “You know, my white feminist friends, they don’t shave and that’s a one-time choice for them: they go through a couple of weeks of their legs being kind of prickly, and then it’s done with. It’s not terribly visible, it’s not something that people comment on on a regular basis, you know, it looks like a fairy has sneezed on their legs.” In contrast, Saima said, “When an Indian girl doesn’t shave, [...] it’s something that’s a constant day-to-day decision that you have to make over and over again. [...] Every day, you have to wake up and be like, you know what, I’m gonna wear shorts today, and I’m gonna get weird looks and I’m gonna get people wrinkling their nose at me, [...] but it’s a decision that I’m making.” This racialized evaluation of body and facial hair, however, is not limited to public spaces, but also manifests itself in intimate relations.
Ralph talked about his body hair being fetishized by people he has dated, like an ex-boyfriend who confessed to him that he was just “his type” for being hairy. He said, “Especially with the cis-gay dating/hookup scene in Montreal, you get a lot of white men who are delighted that ‘you’re very hairy, I like that,’ or something more inappropriate along those lines.”
The criteria for how acceptable a body is in terms of the amount of hair it grows also depends on racial prejudices... Too much or too little hair can lead to fetishization, public scrutiny, and even body policing by the literal police. Batu also spoke to being caught off guard by encountering racialized conceptions of body hair in intimate settings. He talked about visiting close friends in the U.S. over winter break, noting how one of the biggest conversation topics throughout his visit revolved around his having grown a beard. He was told, “There are terrorists everywhere, and they will think you are one too,” followed up with, “I’m just thinking of your own safety.” Batu explained that his friends didn’t believe him when he told them that there was no ideology behind him growing his beard, and said, “It was really surprising for me to see that [white people] feel the need to have some sort of say over my body and my biology.” Arîn pointed out that in addition to these racialized experiences of facial and body hair which fall within a white/non-white dichotomy, her people have also experienced racism, classism, and sexism from other brown people. She said, “The shame I experience through negative reactions to my body and facial hair is deeper than being brown alone. [...] We have been
in-house servants, peasants, underpaid workers, and scapegoats for other brown people, too.” Pointing to this additional layer of complexity, Arîn noted, “While I have undying respect for much-needed bodypositive consciousness-raising through social media and other avenues, I need more than that alone to liberate my body from material processes of objectification. [Because] for every landlord, there is also an Arbab and a Sahib.”
Hair versus ERASURE We found that the people we spoke with are comfortable to varying degrees when it comes to discussing hair openly, and even then, the taboo against the topic is often only lifted around close friends and family. This heavy silence around body and facial hair can heighten our internal conflicts, as we might feel alone in our struggle to reach an ideal that was imposed on us. But maybe, if we knew that other people are grappling with these norms too, we wouldn’t feel so hopeless when confronted with the judging stares we get in the mirror and on the street. Speaking to how the topic does not “come up enough,” Irene mentioned that even at home, her father often comments on her and her mother’s hair removal as if it were a strange procedure. “So there’s a lot of this ‘you should be perfectly hairless, but we shouldn’t have to see you doing that’ or ‘you shouldn’t be talking about it.’” Nadia, who feels comfortable talking about facial and body hair with anyone – “every person in integrated engineering just wants me to stop talking about my hair” – links this comfort to a sense of community and connection. “I’ve grown kind of fond of the fact that I’m a brown person and I have this hair, because I kind of own it [and] flaunt it,” she said, adding that talking about it can even be a bonding experience. “Being from Pakistan, it’s like, we start complaining about hair and that’s really how we bond, so [...] it gives me a connection to my ‘brown brothers and sisters,’ as my mom would say.” Saima pointed out that in contrast, in some situations, talking about it can feel like opening yourself up to attack. “I don’t think I would bring it up with someone who I knew would be like, ‘ew, gross, why
would you do that.’ Because I don’t think I’m at a place where I’m secure enough [to defend] myself,” she explained. Talking about what does and doesn’t grow on our body shouldn’t mean setting ourselves up for body shaming, policing, and merciless attacks, but there is no denying that most of the time, it does. As Saima put it, “There are many different ways to not conform to societal norms of beauty and any way that you don’t is a way of taking up space in other people’s consciousnesses; and making people think about you and your choices feels uncomfortable.”
The taboo against the topic is often only lifted around close friends and family. This heavy silence around body and facial hair can heighten our internal conflicts, as we might feel alone in our struggle to reach an ideal that was imposed on us. Fighting against omnipresent ideals of what our bodies ‘should’ look like might seem like a lonely, losing battle, but maybe it can feel less so if our experiences with body and facial hair begin to claim some space. This space can take a million forms, because despite what the world would have us believe, body and facial hair can’t be boiled down to just “gross” – as we were told many times and in many ways in our interviews, it is much more complicated than that. As many ways as there are for people to hate or love or both love and hate their body and facial hair, there exists an equal multitude of ways to unveil, share, and exult in our hairiness. *Name has been changed.
Sci+Tech
February 1, 2016 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com
A step forward for ALS research
15
Are retroviruses the key to a cure?
Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez Mind the Complexities
W
e live in the 21st century: while we go about our everyday lives, twin robot geologists launched by NASA go over Mars’s surface, providing 360-degree, stereoscopic, humanlike views of the terrain. The internet has become the first global knowledge network connecting billions of people with an unlimited number of channels, and we are able to access most of them through small devices that we carry everywhere, namely smartphones. With all of the outstanding advances in science and technology, it seems surprising how many neurological diseases still remain unexplained. What is ALS Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, was first described by JeanMartin Charcot – considered the founder of neurology – in a series of studies conducted between 1865 and 1869. ALS is a neurological disease that consists of progressive degeneration of motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Upper motor neurons reside in the cerebral cortexand brain stem, and use axons (the wires of the nervous system) to transmit signals to the spinal cord, where the lower motor neurons reside. From the spinal cord, the axons of lower motor neurons send electric impulses to different muscles in the body, allowing some muscular groups to contract and release for movement. ALS affects both upper and lower motor neurons, causing damage and neural death. When these neurons die, they leave voluntary muscles paralyzed. We use these types of muscles not only to move, but also to speak, eat, and breathe – thus, patients with ALS suffer a loss of mobility, loss of speech and eventually loss of breathing ability. Even though there is pharmacological treatment to slow the disease’s progression, there is still no known cure to this illness, almost 250 years since its first description. According to the ALS society of Canada, approximately 2,500 to 3,000 people in Canada are living with ALS; 1,000 will succumb to the disease and 1,000 will be newly diagnosed each year. It is a terminal disease with a lifespan after diagnosis of two to five years on average. ALS awareness ALS is commonly associated with Lou Gehrig – the deceased baseball player from whom the disease took its
Jennifer Guan | Illustrator name – and the physicist, cosmologist, and science writer Stephen Hawking, who has shown an atypical course of his disease, surviving more than fifty years since the diagnosis. Last summer, millions of people started talking about ALS thanks to the “Ice Bucket Challenge,” which encouraged participants to film themselves while they had a bucket of ice water poured on their heads to raise awareness and funds for ALS research. The phenomenon quickly went viral on the internet, leading to more than 2.4 million tagged videos circulating Facebook, thrusting the disease into the foreground of public knowledge. In August, the ALS Association announced that their total donations since July 29 had exceeded $100 million. The ALS Association is just one of several ALSrelated charities that have benefited from this awareness. A breakthrough In September 2015, a group of researchers from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) published an article in Science Translational Medicine titled “Human endogenous retrovirus-K contributes to motor neuron disease.” The findings indicate that a retrovirus could be implicated in the course of this mysterious disease. In order to understand this, we must remember what viruses are: tiny infectious agents that are everywhere around us and inside us. They are considered “at the edge of life” because, despite having genes and evolving by natural selection, they
cannot replicate on their own. They need the cell machinery of other species to replicate their genes and assemble their protective coats made of proteins, called capsids. After infecting the cells of a bigger organism, viruses use cell organelles to build other viruses. Some types of viruses, such as retroviruses, will actually insert their genes in the host’s DNA in order to reproduce. Retroviruses are characterized by the presence of reverse transcriptase, an enzyme that allows them to insert copies of their genes into host chromosomes. Retroviruses are more prone to mutation than most viruses: one of the most common of these is the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV is the infectious cause of AIDS, which is treated with antiretroviral drugs that target reverse transcriptase enzymes. This is an example of an exogenous retrovirus, which means for infection to occur, transmision between humans must occur. In contrast, endogenous retroviruses are remnants of ancient viruses that inserted their genes into human DNA long ago and persist through inheritance, generation to generation. This might sound surprising, but up to five per cent of the human genome consists of endogenous retrovirus genes. One of such viral gene sequences in our DNA is called human endogenous retrovirus-K (HERV-K), which is the virus that scientists from the NIH recently found to be related to ALS.
Retroviruses and ALS Avindra Nath, the main investigator of the NIH group, started suspecting a link between a retrovirus and ALS after seeing a patient with AIDS and ALS whose neurological symptoms improved with antiretroviral drugs. This led Nath to look in the medical literature about ALS, where it was found that reverse transcriptase – the enzyme that characterizes retroviruses – had been found in the blood of ALS patients in various reports. No exogenous retrovirus had been linked to ALS, so the researchers began looking into possible endogenous retroviral genes. When, in 2011, they finally found elevated levels of HERV-K in the brain tissue of 11 ALS deceased patients, they decided to test their hypothesis through more experiments. They found that the gene was present in cortical and spinal neurons of ALS patients, but not in healthy controls. They also inserted these genes into cultured human neurons, causing damage and death. Furthermore, they found a way for mice to express HERV-K. These mice developed classic symptoms of ALS: muscle atrophy, progressive paralysis, and death. The strength of this evidence finally convinced the scientific community of a link between these viral genes and the development of ALS, although the exact link remains unclear. The future of ALS What does all this mean in terms of treatment or detection of the ill-
ness? There are two steps after this discovery. The first one focuses on treatment: antiretroviral drugs similar to those used to treat HIV may be used in addition to the usual drug to slow the disease’s progression. The second implication regards early diagnosis. If these sequences can be detected in patients’ DNA or blood, the retrovirus DNA could serve as a biomarker – a measurable indicator of the severity or presence of this disease – which could then lead to earlier intervention. Although the “Ice Bucket Challenge” may have seemed silly, raising awareness for this disease and increasing funding for ALS research will surely continue to be fruitful in the future, guided by the light of this provocative discovery. However, we should never cast skepticism aside: Nath admits that the increase of HERV-K in ALS patients could be the result of something else that’s causing the disease. As Raymond Roos, a neurologist at the University of Chicago, has pointed out, “a link does not imply causality.” Finding these associations doesn’t mean that the genes cause the disease, but rather that they can be implicated in the development of the disease, accelerating ALS. Mind the Complexities is a column exploring how scientific knowledge can be applied to the various problems with mental health experienced in our society. Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez can be reached at mindthecomplexities@mcgilldaily.com.
16
Sci+Tech
February 1, 2016 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com
Nomenclature normalities
An arachnid gets the Tolkien treatment from scientists
Sonia Ionescu | The McGill Daily Clara Kyung Sci+Tech Writer
I
n mid-November, scientists conducting research in Minas Gerais caves in Brazil discovered a new species of harvestman. Often mistaken for spiders, they are commonly referred to as daddy longlegs. The scientists named the new species Iandumoema smeagol, after the cave-dwelling character Smeagol from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. This kind of creativity shows that there is a human element to everything, even in scientific areas seen as “objective.” Tis room for creativity allows researchers to leave their mark on the world through nomenclature. Although it may seem odd to name a species after a fictional character, Iandumoema smeagol’s name is actually quite fitting. In the history of Middle Earth, Smeagol, a hobbit, finds the coveted ring of power and becomes corrupted by it, going into hiding in a cave and turning into the pale creature known as Gollum. Similarly – according to an article published in National Geographic – the golden Iandumoema smeagol “lost most of its pigmentation after generations of living in moist, dark caves,” what little pigment it does have seems
reminiscent of the one ring in its golden colour. While Iandumoema smeagol sounds like a name odd enough for Tolkien himself to have come up with, there are other scientific names that are more recognizable, like homo sapiens, canis lupus, and orcinus orca – humans, wolves, and killer whales, respectively. These names get thrown around frequently, but we hardly think about what goes into the creation of an organism’s scientific name. In biology, scientists use the binomial nomenclature (also known as scientific name) system to identify unique organisms. This assigns a unique two-part name to species. The first part is called the generic epithet, and the second part is called the specific epithet. In other words, the first part refers to the genus of the organism, and the second part refers to its species. This binomial naming system was developed in the mid-18th century by Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist. Linnaeus sought to create a universal system for identifying species, and is often referred to as the “father of taxonomy.” Later in the 19th century, over a long period of time, Georges Cuvier and other scientists advanced the taxonomical classification system by adding the categories of domain,
kingdom, phylum, class, order, and family, but Linnaeus’s methods remain the naming conventions of taxonomy today.
There are also some cases where species have been named after people not due to resemblance but due to personal preference. When scientists discover a new species, they must pick a name that adheres to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. These are very detailed documents that outline the conventions for naming a species, such as latinizing names or what to do in cases of incorrect spelling. Such agreements ensure that the name given to a species is universally recognizable. However, this system is not perfect – because the taxonomic classification system is created by
humans – its accuracy depends on what we are able to observe in the organism. For instance, biologists initially placed fungi in the plant kingdom because they didn’t move; however, once scientists learned about photosynthesis and that fungi don’t photosynthesize, they placed fungi in their own category. So how exactly do scientists pick names? The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature provides rules that scientists must follow once they’ve chosen a name, yet there are no guidelines on how to name a species. As it turns out, scientists are free to choose any name they want for their newly discovered organism. They can choose a name based on the species’ physical characteristics, or its behaviour, or even name it after a person. For instance, in 2012, Yale scientists discovered a fossil in eastern Montana of an extinct species of lizard. They decided to name it obamadon gracilis because its teeth reminded them of Obama’s toothy grin – obamadon is Latin for “Obama’s teeth.” To avoid sending a negative message about the president, they announced the name of the lizard after Obama was re-elected for his second term. Rostropria garbo, a species of
wasp described as a “solitary female,” was named after Greta Garbo, who famously said, “I want to be left alone.” There are also some cases where species have been named after people not due to resemblance, but due to personal preference. For instance, phialella zappai is a species of jellyfish named after music icon Frank Zappa. Marine biologist Ferdinando Boero, who discovered the jellyfish, named it after the musician hoping to get a chance to meet him by doing so, which worked. Zappa even responded to Boero. Writing a short humorous song he called “Lonesome Cowboy Nando.” The binomial nomenclature system has been in use for over 250 years and is considered to be an objective and logical way of naming new species, but it is important to remember that constant human element. Not necessarily a bad thing, freedom in choosing a species’ name allows for creativity (and sometimes humour), and it is a way for people to leave their mark on the world. Cases like Iandumoema smeagol show us the profound impact that some parts of popular culture have on us – be it a musician, actor, political leader, or fictional world.
Culture
February 1, 2016 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com
Squeezed out of McGill
17
McGill performing artists petition for practice spaces in Royal Vic Connor Spencer Culture Writer
T
wo weeks ago, Sophia Metcalf, a Psychology and Music major, started a petition entitled “Praxis Tactics: Making Space for McGill’s Performing Arts.” The petition Metcalf initiated supports her application requesting that available space in the Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) building be designed to provide adequately equipped rehearsal rooms. After the University Health Centre’s move to the Glen site last April, the McGill administration in collaboration with the Quebec government have been considering the fate of RVH. As part of the feasibility study that guides the decision regarding the RVH site, the Principal’s Task Force on the Academic Vision and Mission of the RVH has been accepting proposals and suggestions regarding the use of space to get a representative picture of students’ voices. Metcalf ’s initiative, in turn, aims to respond to students’ needs by making sure that new performing arts spaces reflect an interaction of music, dance and theatre. In particular, the petition suggests using the space at RVH to create 18 rehearsal spaces of different sizes, all with large windows, which would be outfitted with upright pianos, plug points, and light dimmers. Metcalf is convinced that her idea to use the space for performing arts “will not go to waste,” as McGill students are “intellectual, driven,
and diligent,” and all they need is an incentive to continue growing. “Ultimately, the goal would be to create an incorporated, collaborative space for the performing arts to flourish here at McGill, and to encourage communication across our many [diverse] communities,” Metcalf told The Daily. She hopes to make it possible for students outside of performing arts to cultivate their talents further and continue growing artistically. “Having space that could be rented by any student, no matter what faculty, [...] would change drastically the relationship between McGill and its students, allowing students to keep up with extracurriculars [that] they [...] do not have a space for on their own,” she added.
“Ultimately, the goal would be to create an incorporated, collaborative space for the performing arts to flourish here at McGill.” Sophia Metcalf, a creator of the petition According to the petition, the performing arts community at McGill often has difficulties finding rehearsal spaces on cam-
pus, leaving only inconvenient alternatives. “[This includes] praying [that] the English Room isn’t booked, grabbing any free SSMU [Students’ Society of McGill University] room you happen to get your hands on, [...] or sometimes even sneaking into the proper rehearsal spaces at Concordia,” Anurag Choudhury, an English major who has been involved in many shows on campus, told The Daily. Sophie van Bastelaer, the director of Players’ Theatre’s upcoming Dinner production told The Daily, “Trying to find rehearsal space for Dinner [...] we [...] would trudge to the Sherbrooke 688 [building] in the evenings, competing with hordes of other groups, prowling around the building looking for open, cramped, [and] loud rooms in which to rehearse.” The university administration says that, although it is “keenly aware of McGill’s space deficit,” long-term planning is what is on the agenda for reconstructuring the RVH site. “The key with RVH is to develop an exciting longterm vision for this new campus that is seen as furthering our academic mission and other strategic priorities,” McGill’s VicePrincipal (Administration, and Finance) Michael Di Grappa told The Daily in an email. Notably, the first phase of the project is estimated to take no less than five to seven years. In her proposal, Metcalf gives examples of students who had to give up practicing artistic hobbies in their free time because there was no space for them to self-
Marina Djurdjevic | The McGill Daily improve. Oscar Lecuyer, an English Department Drama and Theatre representative, told The Daily, “I have heard of countless amazing ambitious projects pitched by my fellow colleagues and peers that have slowly shrivelled and died under the organisational pressure that this lack of spaces is forcing students to undertake.” Metcalf’s petition aims to collect 500 signatures by tonight. In midFebruary, Metcalf will send her proposal and petition to the University. If it approves the proposal, it will then be compared with other suggestions for RVH’s space redistribution. Metcalf is worried, however, that the University’s focus on sciences and research will skew the perspective and result in the RVH space being turned exclusively into labs. “RVH is a huge facility, it could hold fifty groups. I just want
to be sure that the performing arts are a part of it,” she said. Groups such as Seeing Voices Montreal and Players’ Theatre have been very supportive of the project. “There are professors willing to support this initiative as well, so even if you don’t take it from us, take it from them,” added Metcalf. Metcalf, and all of the students backing her proposal, are convinced that these spaces are an essential interdisciplinary resource to facilitate learning, sharing, and creating. According to van Bastelaer, “Vague citations about money and spatial concerns should no longer be an excuse for the physically and artistically cramped environments McGill performers are told they have no choice but to deal with.”
CONSPIRACY! bends time and space Dramatic comedy reworks history
Deanna Duxbury Culture Writer
R
egarding the death of poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe in 1993, only three pieces of information are known. The inquest into his death, a reference to a bar brawl, and slanderous accusations of atheism. Thus begins Chocolate Moose Theatre’s CONSPIRACY!, a complex comedy that bends space, time, and truth. The play ended its four day run on January 24. Playwright and co-director Martin Law knots the audience into the intrigue of Marlowe’s mysterious death. The play begins with a secret mission from the crown, in which Richard Bull (Dakota Wellman) and Jane Bull (Alexandra Petrachuk), a pair of sibling spies, are recruited to fake the death of playwright
Christopher Marlowe (Kenny Struele). Richard and Jane must navigate the conspiracies around them as they run off into a tangled web of half-truths and historical inaccuracies. Writing with sharp and entertaining wit, Law weaves fact and fiction together. When asked what Christopher Marlowe would make of this work, Law told The Daily, “I think he would probably turn in his grave a bit, but he might have a chuckle.” Playful and inventive, CONSPIRACY!’s actors never held back for a moment. The humour of Marlowe’s character was not lost in Struele’s acting. He had an enthusiastic stage presence as a foul, horny, hilarious drunk that could barely walk in a straight line. The events surrounding Marlowe may have involved serious matters of church and state, but Marlowe himself was riotously
blunt and intoxicated throughout the play. To add to the ridiculous, Broomstick, a witch-fearing Scotswoman played by Katherine Turnbull, made the audience laugh until they cried. Turnbull turned the already comedic character into a truly excellent one, never failing to liven the absurdity of the show with unrestrained eccentricity. Wellman and Petrachuk were a brilliant pair of leads. Their familial bickering and banter charmed the audience. Whether they were running from the crown, dragging a corpse across the stage, or arguing over an exhusband, the two never left the audience bored. Wellman captured the quirkiness of Richard Bull perfectly, representing an unintelligent “intelligencer.” Petrachuk’s Jane Bull had a consistency that the shifting plot of CONSPIRACY! tended to lack.
Her comedy was right on cue with moments of deep emotion that made the play even more intense. Leading into the climax of the play, everything began to unravel, but Petrachuk’s performance was consistently steadfast and brilliant throughout. The acting and direction made for an animated show, but closer to the finale the plot became muddled. The overlapping conspiracies drawn throughout the play clashed in a messy, intense debate. This moment was sustained for one moment too long, and led to a lasting sense of confusion in the end. There was nothing subtle about the deathdefying finale, with the playwright rising from the dead to rework history and live to be the Shakespeare we know. Law told The Daily that “the only way I could explain how
anything happened was that Christopher Marlowe’s spirit was reaching into my brain and forcing someone from the 21st century to resurrect him in place of Shakespeare.” Law found that the beauty of the comedy was realizing he knew nothing about Christopher Marlowe. The playbill introducing the performance reades, “The play you are about to see may not be entirely historically accurate. Notwithstanding, it may not be entirely un-historically accurate. There are many ways to look at historical accuracy.” This single truth captures the creativity of CONSPIRACY! and, in Law’s own words, encourages “a sense of just how little we know.” A comedy with a penchant for disaster, this play likely kept audiences intrigued long after the final bow.
18
Culture
February 1, 2016 The McGill Daily | www.mcgilldaily.com
POC artists to watch: Jef Barbara Transcending stereotypes in rock and new wave pop
Jedidah Nabwangu Talk Black
I
have fallen into a deep infatuation with the 1980s. From the goth, post-punk sound of The Cure to the androgyny and tightfit neons that ruled the fashion world, I am seriously thinking of changing my name to Molly Ringwald II. Okay, maybe that’s taking it a little bit too far, especially because the 1980s aren’t exactly beloved in contemporary society in the first place. It’s as if every mention of the era stabs people deep in the gut like the memory of an extremely embarrassing moment. Maybe it has to do with the bad hair perms? Who knows. All I know is that I’m digging it at the moment, and so it should come as no surprise that this week’s POC (person of colour) artist to watch has more than a little something to do with it. Jef Barbara is like the breath of 1980s air that every plaidwearing, modern-day stuckin-the-nineties hipster needs. Montreal born and raised, Barbara has been doing their thing since around 2009, and has shown little to no signs of slowing down. Signed to Fixture Records and releasing new material almost yearly, including 2012’s daydream treasure LP Soft to the Touch, Barbara has become somewhat of a local pioneer in the revival and redefinition of the notorious era that was very much dominated by whiteness,
Rahma Wiryomartono | The McGill Daily especially when it came to musical movements like post-punk or new wave. In essence, having a POC artist like Barbara reinvent those movements by developing their own take on them in 2016 serves as nothing less than history in the making. Last week saw the premiere of Barbara’s new music video for their cover of Rexy’s “A Perfect Day” off the 1981 album Running Out of Time. The video exudes
a retro feel, featuring Barbara and some of their friends strolling through parks, eating pizza, and generally having a good time. While the original can be described as a typical new wave classic, Barbara’s take on it pushes things past their limits and tears through to an entirely new dimension, while still keeping with the spirit of the traditional synth sound of the 1980s. Barbara’s version brings in a
unique sound by slowing down the overall tempo of the song, supporting their soothing signature dream pop vocals. Coupled with brief interludes of Barbara whispering over a psychedelic electric guitar, the resulting combination is what really distinguishes it from the original. Barbara blends together rock and new wave pop, two genres that coexisted throughout the Golden Years, but made it a point
to remain distinct and separate from each other, perhaps as an act of rivalry. Even today, very few artists choose to explore combinations of sounds like this, even though they are more than available to them. They feel constrained by the implicit rule that in order to be successful, artists must remain categorized and focused on the musical needs of one specific demographic. It’s refreshing to see an artist who doesn’t limit themselves artistically but instead chooses to develop their creativity by dipping into all the waters. Barbara’s music isn’t only breaking barriers on an artistic level, it’s doing so on a social level. Locally speaking, Barbara’s music is making it much more possible for POC musicians to transcend and explore music genres that aren’t stereotypically assigned to them by society. By stepping and cementing themselves into a historically white and exclusive musical territory, Barbara has managed to combat some of the harmful alienation that POC have experienced within that environment, making it easier for POC fans and artists to partake and ultimately feel welcome. All of this, and they still manage to keep up with all the cuteness and the glam, damn. Talk Black is a column that seeks to engage in anti-racist culture writing, addressing art, music, and events. Jedidah Nabwangu can be reached at talkblack@mcgilldaily.com
Participatory meaning-making do it reforms static visual arts
Coco Zhou Culture Writer
T
he modern museum is anything but neutral. Many of us focus on the beauty of art, forgetting that it is always produced within specific material circumstances. The decision of institutionalizing some forms of art over others, within the walls of the “white cube,” is governed by economic and political choices which determine the value of works of art. These limitations of envisioning museum space have been continuously questioned since the early 20th century, and by the 1960s many artists started to take an active stance in deconstructing the exhibition space in which their art was shown. If the museum could no longer be said to have authority on what constitutes as art, then who does? do it toys with this question. Curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist
and currently stationed at Galerie de l’UQAM, the travelling exhibition involves a display of instructions given by specific artists, that the viewer can choose to follow or ignore. Many of the instructions were produced by local artists, and some instructions designed elsewhere were interpreted by participating artists in Montreal. The installation’s at once global and site-specific nature situates it at a very distinct place in the spectrum of contemporary art exhibitions. The display is a product of collaboration, arguing that works of art can and should be participatory. Obrist began the project in mid-1990s, when numerous instructions for creating art were disseminated internationally, in nine different languages. Since then, hundreds of artists have offered their interpretations of artistic vision; and the meaningmaking of instructions is ongo-
ing. In addition to artists generating new contexts, the moments of encounter between the viewers and the art are also crucial to participatory art. do it facilitates these encounters by inviting viewers to occupy the exhibition spaces and asking them to complete tasks that physically transform it. Viewers are invited to draw on the walls, to make noise, and to take notice of each other while they do all of these things. For one piece, photographer Vincent Lafrance was assigned to walk the streets of Montreal and follow local artist Chih-Chien Wang. Mario García Torres, the instructor, wrote the directions a decade ago, and now they are being completed by an artist in Montreal. The oddities of the actual mission aside, it enables a spatial and temporal connection between the artist who gave the instructions, the artist who interpreted it, and the viewer.
Notably, the meaning of “artist” is slippery, as it rests unclear who produced the final product: the instructor, the performer, or the artist who was being followed. Lafrance filmed the process of materializing García Torres’s instructions, producing a documentary for the exhibit. In this way, the do it appears to be selfreferential, based on the specific instructions propagated by Obrist two decades ago. Ironically, there is only one name consistently attached to do it, and it is that of Obrist. More and more often, curators interpret the spatial and temporal conditions of the contemporary art exhibition in such a way that they themselves become artists. Ultimately, do it can be read as an artwork in its own right, with Obrist being its curator-as-artist. While Obrist’s attachment to the exhibition ironically undermines some of what the exhi-
bition is trying to do, namely, reworking the traditionally hierarchical artist-viewer dynamic, do it still enables the viewer to experience aspects of artistry in an exhibition setting, in a fun and engaging way. The exhibit demonstrates that neither the “final product” nor the identity of the “artist” is the point of the project. This idea is visualized in many of the installations, such as Michelle Lacombe’s piece “Please strike through my name wherever it appears in relation to this exhibition.” Instead, the viewer gets to decide whether a set of instructions should be followed through and to what end. Artists no longer have the final word on the real effect of the work. The meaningmaking role has been transferred to the viewer. do it runs until February 20 at Galerie de l’UQAM.
Editorial
volume 105 number 18
editorial board 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-24 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9
February 1, 2016 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
McGill needs to act on employment equity now
phone 514.398.6784 fax 514.398.8318 mcgilldaily.com
The McGill Daily is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory. coordinating editor
Niyousha Bastani
coordinating@mcgilldaily.com coordinating news editor
Cem Ertekin news editors
Ellen Cools Saima Desai commentary & compendium! editors
Janna Bryson Igor Sadikov culture editor
Kateryna Gordiychuk features editor
Vacant
science+technology editor
Eric Sun
sports editor
Vacant
multimedia editor
Anya Sivajothy photos editor
Sonia Ionescu illustrations editor
Sarah Meghan Mah copy editor
Chantelle Schultz design & production editor
Rahma Wiryomartono web editor
Marc Cataford community editor
Vacant
le délit
Julia Denis
rec@delitfrancais.com
cover design Sarah Meghan Mah contributors Melis Çağan, Marina Cupido, Marina Djurdjevic, Deanna Duxbury, Victor Frankel, George Ghabrial, Jennifer Guan, Michael Han, Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez, Jeeventh Kaur, Nadir Khan, Clara Kyung, Jedidah Nabwangu, Anna Pearson, Mathew Schilling, Alice Shen, Connor Spencer, Xavier Richer Vis, Coco Zhou
Sarah Meghan Mah | The McGill Daily
W
hy are so many of your professors white men? A damning report recently released by the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) has an answer: McGill utterly fails in ensuring employment equity. The researchers behind the report found that McGill lacks the “commitment, formalized practice, and transparency” required to ensure fair hiring and employment practices. McGill’s Employment Equity Policy, passed in 2007, has had little effect. There is no guidance and leadership on equitable hiring. Racialized people, Indigenous people, and people with disabilities remain vastly underrepresented; and data on gender and sexual minorities is not being collected at all. It’s imperative that McGill prioritize equitable hiring practices with the full urgency the issue deserves. Inspired by principles of affirmative action in the U.S., Canada’s 1986 Employment Equity Act sought to address systemic barriers to employment and discrimination in hiring faced by historically marginalized groups. It aimed to redistribute the unearned social and economic advantages enjoyed by privileged groups, in particular upperand middle-class white men. Representation is all the more important in a university, a site of knowledge production and education: in the words of McGill professor Charmaine Nelson, “the [research] questions people pose come from their identity, because people understand the world through their own bodies” – through their race, gender, ability, sexuality. Moreover, underrepresentation at the faculty level promotes systemic discrimination at McGill, and impedes the potential progress of students belonging to marginalized groups.
McGill’s haphazard approach to equity in the form of adhoc committees and one-off reports has been unsuccessful, because the measures taken have not been accompanied by any serious effort to change the institutional culture. While it appears as though women have made some gains – women made up 50.8 per cent of those employed as McGill contract academic staff in 2014 – they still comprise only 31.6 per cent of tenure-track academic staff; further, these gains have not been seen for other groups, and not equally among women. To remedy this, McGill needs to adopt a more comprehensive approach to equity. As the report suggests, such an approach requires leadership on equity and intellectual diversity from the upper administration, mandatory equity training for hiring committees, and the development of accurate tracking mechanisms and accountability structures. McGill lags behind other academic institutions on the issue of employment equity. Other universities such as Dalhousie, Queen’s, Western, York, and Windsor have equity offices with clear mandates to promote equity throughout the campus community. While the Social Equity and Diversity Education (SEDE) office does much of this work at McGill, its role is merely consultative, and even then it is rarely consulted for hiring. The recommendations of SSMU’s report are the minimal necessary steps that McGill needs to take toward eliminating discriminatory employment practices. As institutions, universities have immense power in producing and disseminating knowledge, and McGill’s faculty should reflect the different realities that shape this knowledge. —The McGill Daily editorial board
Errata 3480 McTavish St., Rm. B-26 Montreal, QC H3A 1X9 phone 514.398.6790 fax 514.398.8318
The article “Students recall experiences with Office for Students with Disabilities” (January 25, News, page 6) incorrectly quoted SSMU VP University Affairs Chloe Rourke as having said there are considerable waitlists for students to register at the OSD. In fact, Rourke was referring to considerable waitlists for the McGill Mental Health Service. The Daily regrets the error.
advertising & general manager Boris Shedov sales representative Letty Matteo ad layout & design Geneviève Robert
Mathieu Ménard
dps board of directors Zapaer Alip, Niyousha Bastani, Joseph Boju, Hannah Besseau, Deeva Bowry, Julia Denis, Ralph Haddad, Igor Sadikov, Alice Shen, Tamim Sujat, Dana Wray All contents © 2016 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.
CONTACT US NEWS COMMENTARY CULTURE FEATURES SCI+TECH SPORTS MULTIMEDIA
news@mcgilldaily.com commentary@mcgilldaily.com culture@mcgilldaily.com features@mcgilldaily.com scitech@mcgilldaily.com sports@mcgilldaily.com multimedia@mcgilldaily.com
PHOTO ILLUSTRATIONS DESIGN&PRODUCTION COPY WEB COMMUNITY
photos@mcgilldaily.com illustrations@mcgilldaily.com design@mcgilldaily.com copy@mcgilldaily.com web@mcgilldaily.com community@mcgilldaily.com
19
Compendium!
February 1, 2016 www.mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
20
Lies, half-truths, and keeping up with the gods.
The Mount Olympus Weekly Ionia Sonescu The McGall Weekly
C
enturies ago, on the peak of Mount Olympus, Aphrodite and Zeus frolicked, lounged, and loved together. However, their romance was brief and ill-fated: it was only two years from the blossoming of their romance to its tragic end, when Aphrodite realized she could do better. Meanwhile, Aphrodite’s most consistent and beloved companion, Athena, welcomed a sweet cherub into the world. Dionysus, the boy’s father, and Athena became engaged later in the year. Two years later, Zeus has found a new love: Hera. The two had been friendly, gallivanting among the columns and temples of pure white for years. Soon, Zeus was spotted enjoying ambrosia with Hera’s family, who produced a biographical weekly play at the local amphitheatre: Keeping Up with the Argeias. The townspeople knew that Zeus and Hera were seriously enamoured when Hera was seen commandeering Zeus’s $500,000 chariot. Despite their obvious blissful
love, something – or someone – was still on Zeus’s mind. Zeus composed a song, entitled “krýo” about his former love, Aphrodite, and her new lover, Hephaestus, stating that there were no hard feelings between the two couples, both prominent in the social scene of Olympus and nearby Thessaloniki. All were in good spirits, and Aphrodite and Hephaestus welcomed their first child into the world, and quickly thereafter had a secret, private wedding ceremony. Never one to miss out on trends, Zeus soon fathered a child as well, and later had a wedding befitting a god of his importance. There was one notable absence from the wedding: Hera’s brother, Poseidon, left the wedding early after months of displaying a stormy disposition. Athena and Hera bonded over their motherhood, as well as trying to get back to their fittest in time for nude beach season – the ancient Greeks did love their nudity. Initially, the split between Dionysus and Athena did not alter this, as they remained friends, and Dionysus and Zeus were close as well. However, the situation quickly escalated.
Ionia Sonescu | The McGall Weekly Aphrodite and Hephaestus split only 14 lunar cycles after their secret wedding, and Aphrodite experienced a heartache unlike any she had ever felt before. In even more shocking news that shook the ground the ancient Greeks stood on, Dionysus and Hera’s younger sister, Demeter, began a period of courtship, despite a ten-year age gap between the two gods. This shattered any possible friendship between Athena and Hera, and Athena turned to Aphrodite for solace.
It was at this time that Aphrodite issued a 140-character decree about the Argeia family and its drama: she explained her concern about young Demeter and decried Dionysus for leaving Athena for such a young child. The Argeia family was quick to reply, making accusatory statements about Aphrodite’s own past – it was common knowledge that she had been a dancer at 15, two years younger than Demeter when she entered her relationship with Dionysus. Aphrodite, not one to be shamed for
her sexuality, retaliated with a pointed jab at Hera’s own past, which included a rather explicit play; this remark brought down Zeus’s wrath, although Aphrodite continued to speak positively about her sexuality, ignoring these negative remarks. This long-lasting drama came to a cliff hanger as Poseidon and Athena confirmed their romance, and Zeus and Hephaestus engaged in a public battle. What will happen next? Find out in the next edition of The Mount Olympus Weekly.
Smah | The McGall Weekly