Returning home for reading week often comes with the usual barrage of concern from my family over my choice to pursue journalism as a career. “Journalism is a dying field,” my family members say. “Anybody with a blog can be a journalist.” Yet, I could scarcely go a day without[Read More…]
Opinion
Opinions from our editorial board and contributors.
Toward a weed-friendly campus: Let’s set the bar high
It’s no secret that many university students smoke weed, including at McGill. With marijuana set to be legal in Canada by the end of the summer, schools no longer need to turn a blind eye. In preparation for the new industry, McGill’s Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences has already[Read More…]
Condemned to be free: Social sciences and humanities graduates on the job market
As the tired idiom goes, “freedom ain’t free.” The cost of freedom is total responsibility. It’s a cost many social sciences and humanities (SSH) students are familiar with, finding that their degree’s broad applicability is, in fact, paradoxically limiting. A February 2018 report by The Conference Board of Canada found[Read More…]
Why students don’t care about SSMU
It’s that time of year again: Your friends from rez and frosh are inviting you to Facebook events and announcing their candidacy for various Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) positions. But, despite their well-lit headshots and carefully-worded bios and platforms, voter turnout in recent SSMU elections suggests that most[Read More…]
Inclusive hiring requires more than a quota
Dalhousie University has recently come under fire for limiting its search for a new vice-provost student affairs to “racially visible persons and Aboriginal peoples,” in an effort to boost minority faculty representation. Critics have condemned the policy as discriminatory against white people, and argue that hiring based on race, rather than[Read More…]
Ontario government: Local research models matter, too
Ontario universities are currently working with the provincial government to create and fulfill Strategic Mandate Agreements, the goals of which are to “[build] on current strengths and to help drive system-wide objectives and government priorities.” Part of this process is evaluating a university’s research using bibliometrics—the quantitative analysis of journal[Read More…]
Hey! You should come see my band tonight
You’re at Café Santropol on a Sunday afternoon. Visibly focused on your work, headphones in, you become aware of a turtlenecked, tiny-hatted, vaguely stinky entity behind you. He won’t tap your shoulder, but as seconds stretch into minutes, you begin to turn your head, not quite toying with the idea[Read More…]
Montreal needs to improve public transit accessibility
Fifty-two years since the Société de transport de Montréal (STM)—then called the Commission de transport de Montréal—unveiled the Montreal metro, the system still excludes wheelchair users. The STM is a public corporation that runs Montreal’s public bus and metro systems. However, two thirds of commuters in the Greater Montreal community[Read More…]
Not all university degrees are equally valuable
While meandering from lecture to lecture, there is one question that has undoubtedly crossed every McGill student’s mind: Why am I here again? The answer to that question for the young philosophers at McGill is likely to be something along the lines of ‘to become a more fulfilled and learned[Read More…]
A never ending news cycle: Responding to coverage of the American president
Since Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican Party’s nomination for U.S. President two and a half years ago, he has dominated headlines worldwide. He generates an immense amount of news coverage, even by presidential standards. This has been accomplished through a careful manipulation of the media. Many people,[Read More…]
