McGill Tribune “Happy Holidays!” Well, “bah, humbug” to you, too. Yes, that’s right: the politically correct platitude, “Happy Holidays” rides in the same sleigh as cranky old Ebenezer Scrooge. And just like Dickens’s notorious misanthrope, “Happy Holidays” stifles the unbridled kindness that the season brings, turning the once popular phrase,[Read More…]
Opinion
Opinions from our editorial board and contributors.
The dark side of Black Friday
I’ve always thought the generic soft-pop music played in department stores and supermarkets works fairly well to calm shoppers. It lulls you into a peaceful state, and is never catchy enough to excite you. But on Black Friday, in America, it’s useless. Stores might as well blast Metallica or angsty-screamo-punk[Read More…]
Thirteen theses on seven days
A TA-ngible achievement
McGill Tribune After eight months of negotiations, the McGill administration has ceded to the core demands of AGSEM, the union representing McGill University’s teaching assistants. The result is a new three-year contract for TAs that includes an annual salary raise of 1.2 per cent, an added pay rise of three[Read More…]
Repression and defiance in Syria
You’d be forgiven for thinking that after eight months of sustained protest against his brutal regime, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad might show a bit of humility. Yet despite the remarkably persistent uprising against his regime and the deepening international isolation of his government, al-Assad continues to offer little besides defiance[Read More…]
Helicoptering in a bit of student solidarity
Everyone and their imaginary friend are writing about the events of this past two weeks. I don’t want to be left out, so I’ll throw in my two cents as well. Although I wasn’t at the tuition hikes march, I did emerge from the SSMU building to a lot of[Read More…]
This month’s silver lining
In the last few weeks, stalwart European leaders have resigned, the predictions of a possible recession in Canada have been cast, riot police appeared on the McGill campus, a would-be American leader forgot the third point of his own platform, the Syrian regime brutally cracked down on its own people,[Read More…]
Queen’s U. was right to stamp out profanity
McGill Tribune Queen’s University made a strong statement last Thursday. The university and its student society, the Alma Mater Society (AMS), jointly suspended the century-old Queen’s Bands from performances for the remainder of the semester after the administration discovered that the band had distributed offensive material to its members. Queen’s[Read More…]
An open letter to Principal Munroe-Blum
Dear Principal Munroe-Blum, On behalf of more than 8,000 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, I would like to express the concerns that were raised since the beginning of the MUNACA strike on Sept. 1, 2011. It is certainly true that it is not “business as usual” at the university. Our[Read More…]
We, too, are McGill
McGill Tribune We are seven staff members who were working in the fifth floor offices of the James Administration Building on Thursday, Nov. 10 when 14 protesters broke in and forcibly occupied our workspaces. We would like to add our voices and experiences as staff members to the public record[Read More…]