Living alone in first year, pushed strongly toward my introverted side by the solitude, I found a strange kind of comfort watching the YouTube videos of essayist Christopher Hitchens lecturing and debating the opposition. An overweight, potentially drunk, white-suited, occasionally bearded, smart-aleck British ex-pat eviscerating rabbis and theologians, dropping opinions[Read More…]
Private
McGill reaches out to students in refugee camps
This August, the World University Service of Canada (WUSC) welcomed 74 refugees from Malawi and Kenya who will attend one of 61 participating universities across Canada this year. Two participants in the program have enrolled at McGill, both in the faculty of engineering. WUSC’s Student Refugee Program (SRP) provides refugees[Read More…]
Burtynsky peels back the layers of oil use
Edward Burtynsky Just how much have humans changed the planet? Edward Burtynsky’s series of 56 photographs, titled Oil, answers that question far better than any academic or researcher ever could. Oil shows just how much we rely on the precious resource, with pictures grouped into three chapters: extraction sites and[Read More…]
McGill jumps in world rankings
Holly Stewart McGill rose in the Times Higher Education World Rankings for 2011. McGill jumped from 35th last year to 28th in the current rankings. Two Canadian schools were ranked higher than McGill in the Times rankings: the University of British Columbia, which moved from 30th last year to 22nd[Read More…]
Opt-in-and-out burger
Over the past few years, “opt-outs” have emerged as one of the most contentious issues in campus politics. For two weeks every semester, students have the option of opting out of certain fees, and, like clockwork, for those two weeks the debate over one opt outable fee in particular starts[Read More…]
Letter to the Editor
On Sept. 14, the Tribune ran the article, well.” For clarification and transparency, SSMU Equity would like to add some commentary: Neither SSMU’s Equity Officers nor the Student Equity Committee has found the event description of Coyote Ugly 2.0 to be at odds with the Equity Policy, nor was there[Read More…]
Hartman’s intent admirable, but misdirected
Professor Michelle Hartman, a member of the McGill Faculty Labour Action Group (MFLAG) has recently come under fire for holding a seminar off campus in the Plateau. The Islamic Studies professor supports the MUNACA strike, and wanted to avoid crossing the picket line—a symbolic gesture of solidarity—by teaching her classes[Read More…]
Think outside the picket lines
The university may indeed make strong practical arguments against Michelle Hartman’s decision to hold classes off campus in order to avoid crossing the picket line, but those practical concerns only thinly veil the underlying normative issue—did Hartman sacrifice the educational merit of her class and her academic duties in order[Read More…]
QPIRG Opt-Out Campaign
Every year, the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) relies on hundreds of thousands of dollars of your money to promote its extreme politics. But fortunately, you have a choice: you can opt out of paying for QPIRG. You can refuse to fund a group which considers Canada an apartheid[Read More…]
QPIRG Board of Directors
The Opt-Out Campaign led by some members of Conservative McGill likes to paint hysterical and misleading pictures of Quebec Public Interest Research Group and its projects. Most recently, the Opt-Out Campaign has targeted the work of the Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble, a QPIRG working group. CIE is a group that raises[Read More…]
