Holly Stewart
Holly Stewart“It gives me great pleasure to welcome all you brains,” opened Wayne Wood, McGill’s Associate Director of Environmental Health and Safety in the Frank Dawson Auditorium, at a screening of Zombieland on Monday that was originally intended to kick off Safety Week. Due to the MUNACA strike, Safety Week has been suspended. The zombie-themed safety presentation was the only event not affected by the strike.
Administrative staff dressed as zombies flooded the room, pulling students from their seats to answer general safety questions on emergency preparedness and how to avoid accidents. A McGill safety-zombie gnawed on a forearm as she spun the “Wheel of Misfortune.” When students answered the mock game show questions correctly, they chose from a variety of prizes including zombie movies and The Zombie Survival Guide. The safety awareness game was followed by a screening of Zombieland.
Wood explained that the safety tent, normally set up outside during September, has been postponed due to the MUNACA strike.
“MUNACA members are essential to the setup of Safety Week and make up a large portion of the audience,” Wood said.
Safety Week may be replaced by a series of Friday lunch hours spanning the entire semester. Numerous events—including the arguably more important ones such as the laptop protection program—have been postponed to later in the semester, when Wood hopes that the MUNACA strike is over.
“We’re looking at Safety Week morphing into ‘Safety Weekly,'” Wood said.
Although numerous students had been drawn in from the rain, the “Wheel of Misfortune” questions related only to germane, common sense safety issues, such as stretching properly to prevent lumbar injuries from sitting at a computer all day and lifting heavy boxes carefully.
Members of both McGill Walksafe and the McGill Student Emergency Response Team (MSERT, formerly MFAS) were in attendance to advertise their services to students and to recruit new volunteers. McGill Walksafe, in particular, has increased its publicity efforts this year.
“A lot of people think we’re a myth,” Schuyler Ozbick, Management Coordinator of Walksafe, said. Walksafe, a volunteer-based student organization, offers an important service by walking students home at night. This is particularly important for students passing through the Milton-Parc community, which has been the site of several attacks in recent years.
“We were very busy with Frosh; we were up until 3 a.m.,” Ozbick said.
MSERT agreed that Frosh was a demanding time for them, particularly as they have increased their presence on campus this year.
“We’ve just expanded our service. We used to only be in Upper Rez and now we have a room in RVC as well,” Ahan Ali, a volunteer with MSERT, said.
Overall, both MSERT members in attendance were pleased with the zombie theme, since it gave them a large audience to advertise their primary message: that students can reach MSERT at any time by calling campus security.
Thankfully, MSERT was not needed that particular night to attend to any zombie bites.
