Last Monday, activist David Suzuki and economist Jeff Rubin shared the stage at McGill for The End of Growth Tour. The two explored the future of environmental sustainability and existing development trends. Suzuki focused primarily on the societal influence of development on the environment, while Rubin analyzed macro growth trends and the nominal price of energy for production to discuss the relationship between growth and sustainability. While each renowned speaker had slightly different interests in sustainability,  both stressed the need to reverse recent growth trends and reduce our environmental footprint. What wasn’t directly explored during Monday’s event was our own individual roles in the process of de-growth. In the aggregate, we need to diminish production and growth—but, as individuals, how can we all participate in this shift?

When it comes to sustainability in general, institutions like McGill can play an essential role in community integration, which can better serve our collective ideals.

While personal initiatives in sustainability are hugely beneficial, the radical change that Suzuki and Rubin demand cannot be initiated without larger-scale implementation. McGill has the opportunity to move concepts like de-growth and sustainability beyond individualistic projects and into more mainstream action. In fact, resources exist at McGill already that support the ideas heard on Monday. Students themselves already have access to student initiatives that promote sustainability for the McGill community. In addition to these established projects, the university can, by virtue of its size, be an effective promotion tool for developing sustainable initiatives that move towards reduced consumption. Campus entities such as the Office of Sustainability, or the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU),  can very effectively provide access to expansive resources and like-minded individuals.

The overarching concept of de-growth is fundamentally based on the idea that yesterday’s economic expansion and environmental degradation are not feasible for tomorrow. Whether a shift is brought about by conscientious policy-making or by economic necessity, it will bring about stagnation in growth. For the speakers at Monday’s event, this is a good thing. The global economy is heavily dependent on the cheap production of goods and hyper-consumption of materials in a way that cannot be continued indefinitely. A move away from this—as radical as it may seem—is more than feasible with the participation of the larger community.

Institutions like McGill can facilitate this first and essential step for a national and global shift prescribed by the likes of Suzuki and Rubin. As students, we have the opportunity to make use of the available community and access to resources to realize our individual conceptions of de-growth. If we accept Suzuki’s and Rubin’s initial premise as presented at The End of Growth Tour, McGill will prove an essential proponent, and promoter, of change for our sustainable future.

Any idea, in and of itself, is beneficial for the process of de-growth. If more people have the opportunity to discuss sustainability in meaningful ways, the community at large will be more receptive to change.

Last Monday Oct. 15 marked the SSMU’s fall General Assembly (GA). In spite of recent reforms intended to make the assembly more appealing and accessible to general membership, it was only able to pass two motions before losing quorum. The centerpiece of these reforms,  passed by referendum last semester, mandates that any motion passed by the assembly must now also be put to an online vote for ratification. Other changes include an enhanced webcast, as well as workshops held beforehand to explain the best practices for debating and how the GA operates.

The implementation of an online vote is a positive preliminary step towards making the GA more democratic and giving it a stronger sense of legitimacy. Ideally, its goal of involving a broader range of participants could also heighten awareness and interest in the assembly. However, last week’s assembly—especially the loss of quorum—was a stark reminder that this will not necessarily be the case. The next test of the reforms will be the online ratification process. The two motions must pass with a quorum of 10 per cent of SSMU’s membership of over 20,000 students. It’s hard to say whether or not the online vote will reach quorum. Recent SSMU winter elections have drawn 25 per cent voter turnout, and it seems unlikely that less controversial issues would raise the same levels of interest. But if membership does fail to bring in the vote, it will raise a significant problem for SSMU beyond underrepresentation.

Democratic values are a crucial aspect of any governing body’s legitimacy, but they must be balanced with functional capacity. If it is not being actively put to use, democracy is useless. If the online vote cannot reach quorum, it will act as an effective blockade rather than a democratic check. In other words, it will prevent a small number of students from passing motions on behalf of the greater society. Even if the ratification does reach quorum, it cannot necessarily represent the will of the student body when motions were voted on consultatively as they were on Monday. While increasing participation and voter turnout is undeniably important, SSMU must find an ongoing way for the General Assembly to have some sort of voice in spite of the problems it currently faces.

There are a number of solutions for SSMU. One of these, already being pursued by this year’s executive, is the use of technological resources and social media as a tool to introduce newcomers to the process and give them a feel for the assembly. In addition to observing the proceedings, students could also interact with the GA and engage in the debate remotely—even if their input did not come in the form of a formal vote.

Alternately, reform could be more structural. One option is to institute a sliding relative quorum between the assembly and the online vote. The minimum quorum for the GA should be reduced, but if fewer people showed up for the assembly, more votes would be required to ratify those same motions online, and vice versa. This prevents a fractional minority from being able to make a binding resolution on the majority unchecked, but also gives motions a higher likelihood of actually making it past the assembly.

Another option is for motions to be categorized based on their potential impact and level of controversy. Different categorizations would require specific quorum levels to move past the GA. The categorization itself could prove to be a controversial process, but certainly not insurmountably so.

While the above  would work towards keeping the SSMU General Assembly responsive and functional in spite of its problems, the proposals can really only treat symptoms. The real issue here is McGill’s culture of inaction and stagnancy when it comes to student politics. It’s an environment where information on elections and referenda get lost in a flood of listservs—I’ve received 16 last week—and where a 20 per cent election turnout is considered a success. Students fail to recognize, or are unaware of, the successes and challenges facing their governing bodies. This is a complex problem, and addressing it will require much more than the restructuring of a ratification system. Though there is no easy solution, it all begins with better communication to foster student awareness of what is being discussed, what is at stake, and why it matters.

The increasing influence of the Internet over the past two decades has been frequently accompanied by periodic bouts of public soul-searching about what effect it is having on society. Over the past week, two major incidents have questioned the Internet’s role in enabling unacceptable behaviour.

The first was the tragic suicide of 15-year-old Amanda Todd, a British Columbian teenager. While commonly reported as an incidence of “cyberbullying,” the facts of the case don’t perfectly support that characterization. Todd was originally harrassed by an adult male who lured her into taking inappropriate pictures, and  then sent them to her friends. After changing schools, she was subjected to further bullying by peers after an incident involving another girl’s boyfriend. In the aftermath of this event, the role of the Internet is questionable. Did it create this behaviour or merely enable it?

In thinking about this dynamic, we should also consider the case of the man behind the infamous “Violentacerz” alias on Reddit, the popular link-sharing site. “Violentacerz” managed several forums on the site that dealt with topics of disputable legality and undisputably bad taste. They ranged from softcore pornography to a forum called “jailbait,” which featured sexual photos of scantily-clad teenage girls. Other forums he ran focused on rape and surreptitious photography of women in public places. The man behind “Violentacerz” was identified several weeks ago as a 49-year-old computer programmer from Arlington in Texas, by the website Gawker.

While there was considerable discomfort and outrage on sections of Reddit about these forums, a large contingent of the site’s userbase rallied to the support of“Violentacerz,” banning links from Gawker sites in retaliation. Those users alleged that these forums were protected by free speech, and therefore perfectly appropriate material for Reddit to host.

Both of these events are connected by one controversial idea: that the Internet has spawned a new frontier of bullying, and a new frontier of general nastiness. In reality, however, the Internet has only created new forums for old behaviour, making it harder to pinpoint ways to stop it.

In some respects, it is hard to counteract this sort of behaviour, even with new legislation. In response to the Todd incident, an NDP MP brought forward a bill authorizing Parliament to study the issue of bullying and come back with recommendations. This seems suspiciously like an attempt to “do something” in the wake of a high profile tragedy without doing anything involving actual political risk or action. Meanwhile, private sites like Reddit need to decide what sort of community they want to foster on their own spaces. The administrators on Reddit, with their generally soft-handed treatment of “Violentacerz,” played the dangerous game of profiting from the traffic he brought to their site while not considering the consequences of the content in terms of both exploitation and bad publicity, not to mention moral implications.

So where do these two incidents leave the issue of speech on the Internet? The administrators of Reddit have previously defended this more offensive content on the grounds of “free speech.” This is how the site responded to the CNN report last year that initially brought inappropriate forums like “jailbait” to mainstream attention, and they responded similarly to a BBC report on the current controversy. The inevitable problem with this stance is that a site influential enough to host Q&As with the President and other prominent figures can’t have it both ways when it comes to dubiously legal and moral content. Still, those who posted on “Violentacerz”’s forums won’t disappear if Reddit does crack down on this behaviour, much like those who bully and torment their peers won’t disappear if their smartphone was taken away. The only way to decisively change this sort of Internet-based behavior is to change the way people view who is ultimately responsible. At the end of the day, responsibility rests solely on the individual, and the Internet merely creates a forum in which bullying and other inappropriate acts can take place.