On Jan. 30, many McGill students’ social media feeds will overflow with posts tagged with #BellLetsTalk. An initiative started by the telecommunications company to increase awareness about mental health, Bell’s “Let’s Talk” event is a day when people can use their social media platforms to raise money for mental health[Read More…]
Commentary
On activism and Jewish identity
On Dec. 3, I participated in a demonstration as part of IfNotNow Montreal (INN). The rally consisted of a small group of Jewish activists, most of them McGill students, who held posters displaying statistics about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. INN is a Jewish organization that[Read More…]
The committee on teaching staff-student relationships has failed students
The Ad Hoc Senate Committee for Teaching Staff-Student Relationships was created to respond to widespread student concerns over how McGill deals with abuses of power in the wake of last year’s winter semester walk-out. The committee was tasked with making non-binding recommendations to Senate which would address McGill’s obligations vis-à-vis[Read More…]
Why I left the Arab Student Network
As an international student who came to McGill from a high school in Kuwait, I have experienced my fair share of culture shock. However, the hardest part about coming to McGill wasn’t moving into residence, leaving my family, or even the academic stress: It was the racism. As a queer[Read More…]
Campus Conversation: Finding power in representation
For many students on campus, university can be an isolating place. The McGill Tribune Opinion section asked marginalized students to write about their personal experiences with representation, or a lack thereof, to answer the question, “Where do students find representation, and how do they create spaces for themselves?” Leina[Read More…]
Grassroots, lawsuits, and the future of climate activism
A group of Quebec youth are stoking a freshly-lit fire in the fight against global climate change. Montreal climate justice organization ENvironment JEUnesse (ENJEU) is pursuing a class-action lawsuit against the federal government for climate negligence on behalf of all Quebec youth under the age of 35. They argue that[Read More…]
Consultation in name only at the joint Board-Senate meeting
On Nov. 14, McGill University held its annual Senate and Board of Governors joint meeting, bringing together the university’s highest academic and financial administrative bodies, respectively. Each year, the two bodies convene to discuss a topic that relates to the university’s mission; I attended as an undergraduate senator from the[Read More…]
New urbanist schemes for transit-oriented teens
On Nov. 19, Montreal mayor Valérie Plante announced, to the outrage of downtown business owners, that the city council has decided to pursue her plan to redesign St. Catherine Street by widening sidewalks to 6.5 metres and reducing traffic to a single lane. This transportation proposal accompanied a host of[Read More…]
Curing the McLennan blues
For many students, midterms, paper writing, and the pressure of the approaching finals season means that they must spend the majority of their waking hours in the infamous McLennan-Redpath Library Complex. McLennan-Redpath is known to evoke strong feelings of anxiety, dread, and stress among its dwellers, due in large part[Read More…]
SSMU votes to change the name. What now?
In the Students’ Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) Fall 2018 referendum, 78.8 per cent of students voted in favour of changing the McGill men’s varsity athletics teams’ name. The result comes in the wake of a petition launched by SSMU Indigenous Affairs commissioner Tomas Jirousek, which has over 10,000 signatures,[Read More…]
