On Sept. 12, activist group Le Quebec c’est nous aussi held a protest against proposed reforms to the Programme experience Quebecoise (PEQ), a fast-track immigration program for international students who wish to permanently reside in Quebec after graduation. While similar reforms proposed (and later suspended) last November sought to impose[Read More…]
Opinion
Opinions from our editorial board and contributors.
Justice Ginsburg will continue to inspire women to study law
Studying law as a woman can be daunting. Despite that women are pursuing careers in law more now than ever before, we are still studying institutions created by powerful men, with the original purpose of serving those powerful men. Landmark Supreme Court of Canada decisions that promoted feminist ideals—such as[Read More…]
Study Hubs fail to reconcile safety and accessibility
At first glance, McGill’s Study Hub initiative seemed like a good idea: Students would be able to access study spaces multiple times a week in three-hour slots. All spaces would be sanitized, and groups and food would be prohibited to guarantee everyone’s safety. The news gave me a sense of[Read More…]
Online learning must prioritize accessibility
Like many students, I found myself returning home before the end of the Winter 2020 semester. Recognizing that these unique circumstances presented an opportunity, I decided to enroll in courses during the summer semester. This was both a wise idea and a horrible one. Having never been to my parents’[Read More…]
Zoom University threatens to leave students behind
During the last two weeks, students were welcomed back to a McGill that no one had ever seen before. Across time zones throughout Canada and around the world, frantic searching for class locations was replaced with anxious scrambling for Zoom links as students and academic staff struggled to adapt to[Read More…]
Quebec’s businesses and linguistic minorities need protection during COVID-19
Since gaining a majority government in the 2018 election, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) has advanced a nationalistic agenda for the province, with one of their principal initiatives being the reinforcement of the primacy of the French language. Most recently, a report found that 40 per cent of Quebec businesses[Read More…]
BIPOC voices will no longer be silenced
On Aug. 29, protestors toppled a statue of John A. Macdonald in Montreal. Besides serving as Canada’s first prime minister, Macdonald is infamously known as the creator of the residential school system and as someone who starved Indigenous groups to forcibly relocate them. Macdonald’s treatment of Indigenous Peoples was reconsitiuted[Read More…]
SSMU cannot ignore francophone students’ concerns
In March, during its Winter 2020 referendum, the Student’s Society of McGill University (SSMU) voted on a new constitution, but a French version of the proposed document was not provided on the ballot. It was not even written until three months later — even though SSMU is officially a bilingual[Read More…]
Studying politics in a society that is rigged against you
When news reports came out on Aug. 26 about yet another incident of sexist harassment outside the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities Catherine McKenna’s office, I felt a familiar sinking feeling in my stomach. Since I began engaging with politics in my early teen years, my awareness of gendered attacks[Read More…]
Reconciliation must go beyond a toppled statue
The police murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 sparked global protests against police brutality and anti-Black racism, giving renewed momentum to the Black Lives Matter movement. In light of these events, McGill, an institution whose history is rooted in violence and enslavement, expressed its intention to put forward[Read More…]
