September has seen three large week-long campaigns on McGill’s campus. The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) organized Anti-Austerity Week, which advocated against the provincial policy of austerity. The following week, Divest McGill had its own week-long protest, Fossil Free Week, which coincided with Indigenous Awareness Week. All events sought[Read More…]
Opinion
Opinions from our editorial board and contributors.
Editorial: The case for a central student hub at McGill
Currently, the University’s academic plan for 2012 to 2017 (detailed in Achieving Strategic Academic Priorities 2012) focuses on improving McGill’s rankings, its research, and thus its attraction and retention of world class students. But such plans do not reflect McGill’s reality as a physical space for students. Despite McGill’s downtown[Read More…]
Commentary: Taking stock of Quebec’s new sexual education curriculum
Sex education classes are making a partial comeback in Quebec this year. The pilot program is an improvement, as it fills a void that has existed since 2005 (the last year that Quebec had dedicated sexual education classes).However, the Ministry of Education, Recreation and Sports (MERS) does not go far[Read More…]
Off the Board: A eulogy for Korova
The news of Korova’s untimely end has shaken lovers of communal asphyxiation, smoke machines, and top 40 hip hop singles across campus. Just two days after a typically successful $ucka Free Monday (Staight Outta Compton Edition), Korova announced on its Facebook page that it was closing for good, and would[Read More…]
Commentary: What austerity means for the children of Quebec
Every week, I go to Ecole FACE to volunteer at an after school program, taking the students around Montreal to explore the community. As I arrived for my shift last week, I was surprised to find myself greeted by gloomy expressions from the children, shades different from their usual chipper[Read More…]
Editorial: Indigenous issues must become part of campus discourse
Indigenous Awareness Week is now in its fifth year at McGill University. The week showcases local indigenous culture through a series of events, beginning with the Pow Wow on Sept. 18, and concluding on Sept. 25 with a symposium titled Resisting Gendered and State Violence: Indigenous Women’s Activism. The focal[Read More…]
Off the board: Drawing the line between inspiration and appropriation
Following the release of Taylor Swift’s new music video for “Wildest Dreams”—the 5th single from her 2014 album, 1989—the singer and the video’s director, Joseph Kahn, came under fire for accusations of racism and glorifying colonialism. It is very easy to call out something as being racist or culturally appropriative—especially[Read More…]
Commentary: Anti-Austerity Week a start to mobilizing students
Last week, the Students' Society of McGill University (SSMU) hosted a number of workshops and discussions to encourage awareness about Quebec’s austerity measures. Anti-Austerity Week at McGill took a strong stance against continuing university budget cuts while aiming to inform students and the public of what austerity means for them: lower[Read More…]
Commentary: Student-Run Cafeteria is risky business
In additin to The Nest, a new, yet-to-be-named food provider has opened in the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) cafeteria this Fall. Both are student-run operations and together make up the Student-Run Café (SRC). This new addition is part of a larger plan by SSMU to move away from commercial[Read More…]
Editorial: On sexual assault, unacceptable gaps remain in McGill’s redress procedures
As McGill works on drafting a new sexual assault policy, one survivor’s experience demonstrated that our administration and faculty associations are failing in their responsibility to provide adequate redress to students who have been sexually assaulted. After an incident at an undergraduate departmental event where the survivor was allegedly sexually[Read More…]
