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Make your student union work for you

by Juliet Morrison on

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The first time I learned about the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) was during a Zoom meeting for The McGill Tribune’s news section in January 2021, nearly five months into my first year. As an intimidated newcomer, I joined the meeting thinking I would just test out the vibe and refrain from picking up a piece. Yet, upon hearing that somebody needed to look into the new investigation that SSMU had just published about its collection of student fees—a number totalling upwards of $2,600,000—I was immediately intrigued.  

My lack of awareness about SSMU prior to joining the Tribune might have stemmed from the fact that we were in the throes of the pandemic, with virtually no campus activity. Although, in talking to students today, it seems like the lack of awareness about what SSMU is, or even does, persists. 

“Literally, I found out what it was the other day. I’d never been into the building [….] We saw a building and everybody was like ‘Oh S.S.M.U’. I’m like, oh, I didn’t even know. I went to the Brown Building the other day, for the first time,” Maria Eugenia Areizaga-Garcia, U0 Science, said.

But students interact with SSMU all the time. If you’ve ever been to Open Mic Night at Gerts, visited clubs at Activities Night, or even used a free charging station at McLennan Library, you’re engaging with an aspect of McGill that SSMU administers, paid for by your student fees. Even matters like the new Fall reading break or 24-hour library access at the start of midterm season are the results of advocacy efforts from SSMU. 

SSMU was established in 1908 and is the accredited student association for the approximately 25,000 undergraduates pursuing degrees at McGill’s downtown campus. Each spring, the undergraduate student body elects six students as “executives” to serve a one-year term and fulfill the society’s mission—“To represent and advance the diverse needs of McGill Undergraduate students by improving the quality and accessibility of education, providing outstanding services, and promoting social, cultural, and personal opportunities.” They work full-time alongside permanent staff to run services, organize clubs, and advocate for students, often directly to the McGill administration. Along with the student executives, SSMU also has a political decision-making body, the Legislative Council, and a dispute resolution body, the Judicial Board. 

Despite SSMU’s pervasive presence in student life, only 12.9 per cent of eligible undergraduate students voted in the elections that ushered in this year’s executives. This reflects a broader trend across Canada of low engagement in student associations, but also students’ disillusionment with SSMU.

Particularly after the events of last year, which saw the overturn of a democratically elected policy and a lack of transparency regarding internal turmoil that gutted the executive team with one impeachment and two resignations, SSMU’s reputation of being an environment that attracts students wishing to pad their resumes and debate trivial matters seems to have become stickier. 

What is SSMU?

A lot of student mistrust can be traced back to a disagreement and lack of clarity over what SSMU’s role should be. Though tasked with advocating for a diverse, large student body, it is also fundamentally a corporate not-for-profit.

The not-for-profit structure is common at other Canadian university student unions, says Justin Patrick, a PhD student at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education studying the politics and history of student government. As he explained, student associations began incorporating as not-for-profits in the 1960s and 70s to skirt the university’s control. 

“Before they were incorporated [as not-for-profits], the student unions were controlled directly by the university administrations,” Patrick said. “This meant that if the students wanted to pass something in their constitution, the university could veto it [….] So in the mid-20th century, there was a big push toward making the unions independent.” 

After corporatization, Patrick explained that student unions began expanding to meet their reporting obligations—the accounting needed to comply with provincial laws around not-for-profits. Unions started to hire permanent non-student staff, and their annual operating budgets increased exponentially as a result. 

In 1992, SSMU brought in $857,174 from student fees. In 2021-2022, it brought in $2,685,111, according to current vice-president (VP) Finance Marco Pizarro. 

Current VP University Affairs Kerry Yang told me that, in addition to just being formally corporatized, SSMU must also function as a corporate entity with a sizable and expanding budget as it fills a void of services that the McGill administration refuses to offer. 

“McGill doesn’t provide any services in terms of student life, such as clubs, room bookings, and it doesn’t hold any student life events,” Yang elaborated via email. “This is because the University says it does not have the funding or capacity to support these services [….] McGill has provided nothing. McGill often says it has budgetary constraints and thus passes on a lot of workload and costs to other organizations, such as SSMU.” 

Compared to other Canadian student unions, SSMU is burdened with a higher workload in providing services. Yang pointed to the SSMU Menstrual Health Project as an example of this imbalance. The University of Toronto offers free menstrual products themselves, while Western University is providing $800,000 to their undergraduate student association so it can expand its menstrual hygiene program.

Running services like the University Centre and Gerts Bar and Café requires staff and a human-resources department. The six SSMU executives are salaried employees, earning approximately $32,000 for their work, which is supposed to average 40 hours a week, but can easily become 60 to 90 hours instead. 

SSMU’s corporate architecture undergirds healthy student life on campus, but can sometimes become a barrier to the union’s political advocacy role. The SSMU constitution notes that the Quebec Companies Act takes precedence over both its Letters Patent, and the constitution itself in “the event of a contradiction” between them. 

SSMU’s corporatization is also why its highest governing body is the Board of Directors (BoD)—an entity whose job is to ensure SSMU acts in the best interest of its business and legal affairs. 

Last year’s events highlighted the precedence of SSMU’s corporate responsibilities when it overturned the Palestine Solidarity Policy that students had passed with a 71.1 per cent majority via referendum. The McGill administration had threatened to sever its ties with SSMU if the Policy were approved. 

Just hours after McGill’s public announcement, the Legislative Council convened for a scheduled meeting that quickly turned into a discussion about what the society’s immediate reaction to the threat should be: Should SSMU issue a statement standing by the policy and Palestinian students? Or should SSMU hold off to weigh the legal repercussions it would face if McGill carried out its threat, which included the potential loss of student spaces, such as the University Centre? They opted for the latter. 

For the members and supporters of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights McGill (SPHR) who created the policy, it seemed like even when they did everything right, including initially getting approval from the Judicial Board, it still wasn’t enough to bypass the BoD’s ultimate power. 

“The BoD, in this particular case, had an objective which was defending the interests of the McGill administration—not the democratic will of the student body,” a representative of SPHR told me. “The Palestine Solidarity Policy last year essentially showed that no matter what students want, and despite the democratic nature of the referendum and the SSMU constitution, which presents democracy as a priority in our student life, the Board of Directors has powers to overturn the desires of students, even though they might conform to constitutional norms.” 

From everyday actions to large-scale change, the balancing of not-for-profit interests and advocacy interests often clash dramatically. Former VP Internal (2021–2022) Sarah Paulin believes that SSMU faces a fundamental tension whereby its corporate responsibilities hinder its potential to advocate for students freely. 

“SSMU plays a very interesting part where it has like two faces, it has the company part, but it also has the advocacy part,” Paulin said. “And those two don’t really align sometimes [because] every decision SSMU makes, it has to think about the laws that it abides by, the people that it’s [employing], as well as advocating for students.” 

Paulin noted that SSMU is also hindered in its ability to freely advocate for students due to the Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) it has with McGill, which she told me favours McGill to the extent that it can easily shut down SSMU if it does anything deemed too controversial by the university. 

“There [are] a lot of statements that can’t be put out because [SSMU] can get sued for it,” Paulin said. “So that’s why there’s this sometimes silence from SSMU because they simply cannot publish something.”

Former SSMU president (2019-2020) Bryan Buraga also told me that the MoA is constructed in McGill’s favour. However, he believed the Board of Directors “folded too early” in overturning the Palestine Solidarity Policy and could have gone further to defend SSMU’s democratic processes.  

“I’ve seen [SSMU’s] so-called corporate responsibilities used as an excuse to push aside student activism and advocacy,” Buraga said.  “[T]here’s a really big leeway in which fiduciary duty can be applied and how far you can push the boundaries before you’re getting into the point where you’re not acting in the best legal interests of the Students’ Society.”

Debating what SSMU should be

Many of the people I spoke to, including students and former SSMU executives, had conflicting ideas about what changes SSMU should or shouldn’t make so that it can best address students’ needs.

Paulin believes that SSMU should move away from advocacy, get rid of the political VP External position, and focus instead on supporting clubs and services. She told me that SSMU’s practice of trying to be a “porte-parole” (spokesperson) for students often alienated the wider student body and contributed to “tension” between the student union and McGill. 

“You can [engage in activism] on your own, you can find political parties within Montreal, but that should not be the student organization’s job, because it takes away from what I think is the true purpose of SSMU, which is having space for students and being able to support clubs and services,” Paulin added. “Who cares about what six students have to say? SSMU will not represent every single student. So it should not try to.” 

U3 Science student and former Legislative Councillor Lucas Nelson thinks that SSMU is best for collecting and distributing student fees to important services, such as DriveSafe. Although he acknowledged SSMU’s advocacy as important, he feels that it often struggles to represent the student population accurately. 

Rather than a complete rejection of advocacy, he wishes SSMU would “deliberate more as an institution” and try to seek out additional points of view from students, given those who typically participate in SSMU’s debates are “not representative of the student body as a whole.”  

“Whenever there are sensitive social topics, I feel sometimes SSMU is pretty quick to take a side on issues when maybe some of the facts aren’t fully available, or when they don’t consider that side or that stance might harm part of the student body,” Nelson added. 

Buraga thinks that increasing student engagement should be the main concern, rather than SSMU washing its hands of advocacy.

He maintains that SSMU needs to abolish its current structure and institute direct democracy at all decision-making levels to improve student engagement. These ideas were built into a political campaign he co-created, which spurned the ‘McGill Student Union Democratization Initiative Policy.’ 

Although it passed in SSMU’s Fall 2021 referendum, the policy was controversial for many at SSMU and seen as simply unfeasible considering its calls to completely reform the operations of independent faculty associations and abolish the Board of Directors. As of yet, none of its structural recommendations have been taken up.

“If people see that they get more tangible results in their time and effort through external activism, or getting involved in a service that provides direct services to students, they might put their time in that versus having to deal with admin BS or Legislative Councils that lasts for hours and hours for no good reason,” Buraga told me. “Unless there’s some sort of massive foundational change to the way that SSMU runs itself, you’re just gonna keep this getting the same issue year after year.”

The plight of student engagement

But there are other voices that are largely absent from the conversation—those of students who don’t vote or participate in the SSMU’s affairs. 

The decline in voter turnout is more severe at larger campuses where the student body is more dispersed, Patrick told me. The voter turnout for the University of Toronto Students’ Union most recent executive elections was a mere 6.6 per cent. 

This trend of low turnout requires student unions to “show [students] that it’s worth getting involved in the student union and making their voice heard, voting, and taking part in the political life on the campus,” Patrick said. “It all kind of comes back to how many students you can mobilize, right? Because you have to show the students that it’s worth caring about this and that it benefits them.” 

However, barriers to student engagement can also be huge. In speaking to students, it’s clear that a lack of awareness hinders their ability to get involved in SSMU. Participation can get costly and Legislative Council meetings typically average around three hours long.

On the other hand, the lack of student engagement makes it difficult for representatives to understand what the student body wants from them and how to best address their needs. 

Drawing on her VP Internal experience, Paulin explained that “execs will come in with a mission and try to do everything we can to fulfill that mission. But when trying to reach out to students, there’s no response [….] We can say ‘SSMU doesn’t do a good job of reaching out to students,’ but when there’s a lack of interest, there’s nothing you can really do.” 

Corporatization, lack of student engagement, McGill’s ceilings to advocacy, and general disconnect between the student body and its union seem to mutually reinforce each other.

In the face of these overlapping issues, it can be easy for students and those involved in student associations to choose apathy and think of themselves as temporary community members. Students whose issues are deemed “controversial”––women, students of colour, disabled students, neurodivergent students, 2SLGBTQIA+ students––are in turn most disempowered if SSMU and community members just give up. As one SPHR representative puts it, SSMU’s actions last year were “very harmful to student activism because it leads to many students thinking ‘oh, why even bother?.”

At a setting like McGill university decision-making is concentrated in the hands of a few senior administrative officials who repeatedly dismiss students as stakeholders. However, there is tremendous value in an association tasked with representing roughly 25,000 students. 

“At the end of the day, student associations are supposed to be beneficial to students,” current VP External Val Masny told me. “And if students believe they’re not, then they’re able to change the way they work. If you think SSMU shouldn’t be doing this, and it should be doing something else, then say something and find other students [….] I invite people to basically, like, make their student association theirs.”  

Everyone has different ideas about what student unions, or any form of political body, should be. Conducting interviews for this piece has confirmed to me that there is no individual or straightforward solution to SSMU’s issues—maybe it needs a more democratic governance structure, or a better MoA, or for McGill to take on the work of providing services  or no changes at all. 

Most importantly, though, we need to have these conversations—SSMU influences so much of our student experience. The more we see it as a site for possibility and engagement, the more it can come to reflect us.

Editorial, Opinion

Privatizing health care won’t fix a failing system

by The McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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The Quebec health-care system is in a state of crisis. ER wait times are dangerously high, and there is a chronic lack of staff—including nurses who are exceptionally underpaid and overworked. Amidst a similar crisis in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford unveiled plans to increase the role of private clinics in the health-care system—a lead Quebec Premier François Legault seems to be following. However, privatization is a step towards undermining Canadians’ right to life by creating a system that prioritizes only those who can afford care. In order for universal health care to live up to its name, Canadian  politicians must work to transform the single-payer system so that health care is truly accessible to everyone.

Apart from overall poor infrastructure leading to long wait times for all, systemic racism remains rampant in the Quebec health-care system. Forced sterilization of Black and Indigenous women continues without large-scale inquests, and in 2020, Joyce Echaquan, an Atikamekw woman, died after racist negligence at the hospital where she sought care. Minute forms of racism also permeate medical care, including the underestimation of pain for Black and Indigenous people, which leads to lower pain-medication prescriptions and poorer outcomes. 

Meanwhile, Quebec’s health-care crisis is creating a workers’ rights catastrophe as nurses and orderlies are subjected to inhumane working conditions and the lowest median pay in the country. The largest union of Quebec nurses filed a complaint with the United Nations due to their forced overtime—which they describe as forced labour. The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), which runs the Montreal General Hospital, also plays a role in the oppression of workers, alongside the institutional racism it perpetuates against its staff andpatients. The crises of overwork and poor health care reinforce each other: When staff are too exhausted to properly do their jobs, then patients suffer as a result, creating a larger strain on the single-payer system.  Government funds must be more efficiently allocated to ensure that staff are treated with respect and not exploited for their labour. 

But instead of taking measures to address the staffing crisis, there are still unreasonably high barriers to entry across medical degrees. Medical school acceptance rates such as McGill’s are unrealistically low, and the process favours wealthy applicants. Such obstacles also extend to the recognition of foreign medical degrees. Highly-qualified health-care workers, with degrees mainly from the Middle East and Asia, are not recognized, and many must entirely restart their degree or clinical requirements—which is often a pricey, tedious process that keeps skilled workers from doing their jobs.

Although the public health-care system is in crisis, privatization is not the way to solve it. Just look south of the border: In the U.S. in 2022, 31.6 million people did not have any health insurance, while 43 per cent of working-age adults were inadequately insured. In a privatized system, where there is no incentive to serve poor, working people, health-care facilities will mainly emerge in the wealthy downtown core, where they can service rich clientele. Privatization efforts and paid clinics will eliminate the concept of health care as a human right. 

Despite what politicians like Ford have espoused, even partial privatization will undermine the entire single-payer system. With more private clinics, many people will stop using public services, and highly qualified doctors and nurses will leave to the higher-paying, private facilities. This will lead to a vicious cycle where there is further underfunding and staff shortages in the public system, decreasing access to and quality of health care for people who can’t pay.

Instead of calling for privatization, we need to invest in the current system to make sure that health care is truly a human right. McGill, especially, must use its institutional power to make medical school entrance requirements more equitable. McGill also has a responsibility to ensure that workers’ rights are protected at the MUHC. In parallel, Quebec government funds must be properly distributed tofix the health-care crisis—not through privatization—but by improving resources for hospitals and ensuring that health-care professionals, especially nurses, are properly compensated and treated with dignity. Quebec’s hospitals need solutions that can equitably care for the needs of all people—not just those who can afford it. 

McGill, News

Luke Stark discusses how digital media exploits emotions in feminist tech series

by Genevieve Downing on

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Luke Stark, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University, delivered a virtual talk on Jan. 18 about the history of affective computing and emotions in cybernetics, the science of communications and control in humans and machines. 

The lecture was part of an annual speaker series titled “Disrupting Disruptions: Feminist and Accessible Publishing, Communications, and Technology,” organized by Alexandra Ketchum, a faculty lecturer at McGill’s Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF). Stark’s research focuses on the ethical, historical, and social impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, which are also the topics of his current book project, Ordering Emotion: Histories of Computing and Human Feelings. 

Ketchum launched the speaker series in 2019.  In an email to the The McGill Tribune, she noted that  Stark’s talk was the 71st of the series. 

“When I started the series, I never imagined how big it would become,” Ketchum wrote. “I wanted to showcase the work of scholars, artists, and people in industry whose voices are less often showcased when it comes to questions of technology. This means that every speaker in the series is a person of colour, queer, a woman, non-binary, or disabled (and many of the speakers in the series share multiple of these identities).”

The talk was given in ‘scenes.’ Scene one centred around Facebook’s reaction icons, titled “Where Did These Faces Come From, and Why Do They Matter?” In this scene, Stark discussed how the like button, a 2009 design choice, is an example of a method used by social media platforms to extract data on user expression. 

“That’s what these reactions are, they are structured data about emotional expression,” Stark said. “In some cases, this data is structured by the user, is developed by the user; in some cases, it is collected without the user knowing or realizing.”

Scene two of the talk outlined how technology companies became interested in developing emotional AI and how AI understands emotions. Stark argues that computing technologies reinforce definitions of emotions that prioritize the body’s physiological reactions to emotions. 

“Computing technologies are taking up much older ideas, and in some ways taking up ideas that have been largely discredited […] in biology, physiology,” Stark said. “These kinds of quantifiable, biophysical definitions of emotions have tended to either directly or indirectly justify emotion and emotional control as both a proxy and mechanism for maintaining social norms […] of colonialism [and] misogyny.”

In scene three, Stark discussed the misrepresentation of emotional AI by technology companies. He debunked Apple’s introduction of Memoji, animated emojis that follow the user’s facial expressions, as a camouflaged cover for the company’s extraction data to improve its facial recognition technology. Stark also noted that digital features often run rampant with biases, pointing to research by Lauren Rhue that discovered how facial recognition systems fail to accurately interpret the emotions of Black people.

In his concluding remarks, Stark quoted Michal Kosinski, a computational psychology and psychometry expert at Stanford University, that equated a smartphone to a “psychological questionnaire that we are constantly filling out, both consciously and unconsciously.”

Zoe Leousis, U1 Arts, attended the talk with the hopes of learning more about the technology she interacts with on a daily basis.   

“It’s something you don’t really think about, how personal the targeting of certain platforms really is and how easily we can be swayed by it,” Leousis told the Tribune.  “I would have never thought of the robot maid from The Jetsons as a mirror to the stereotypes being pushed by these companies.”

Arts & Entertainment, Comedy, Pop Rhetoric

Logan Paul’s genius strategies to make you rich!

by Suzanna Graham on

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Logan Paul is not the scam king that the media has falsely painted him to be. I, for one, am an avid supporter of the hotter Paul brother and have personally spent thousands of dollars on NFTs, which I don’t regret at all. 

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are the genius business of investing in unique digital images that accumulate astronomical value. Understanding NFTs to be the goldmine that they clearly are, Logan dipped his toe into the industry by purchasing one NFT for a whopping $623,000 USD, according to a screenshot of his Snapchat story. Unfortunately for him, the NFT’s worth plummeted to $10—only because there obviously wasn’t the right leader in advertising its true worth. Please welcome to the stage that leader: Logan Paul himself, the perfect champion for NFTs. 

As a non-problematic YouTuber, superstar musician, and intimidating boxer, Logan Paul is the ideal face for this new wave of NFT gaming. Taking inspiration from his love of Pokémon cards—the NFTs of the 90s and early 2000s—Logan devised a game that would maintain the joy of Pokémon’s super cool mythical animals and also introduce the masses to cryptocurrency. He announced this pet project, CryptoZoo, in 2021 on his hilarious podcast, IMPAULSIVE (isn’t he clever?). The game was simple: Use real American dollars to purchase “eggs” on the blockchain, which will “hatch” into common animals you can find on Earth. But where are the hybrid animals I was promised, you ask? Roleplaying as God, you have the power to breed your animals together to create crossbred animals (handmade unique NFT art) which accumulate Zoo tokens the longer you hold them. Think of it like a business pyramid—the most sturdy and successful shape.  

Like all the other listeners, I was immediately sold on CryptoZoo and couldn’t wait to invest. Logan Paul has never steered me wrong before, so why would he now? He alleged on IMPAULSIVE to have invested $1 million USD and over seven months of his valuable time and energy into this project. CryptoZoo was going to be a massive hit. Before launch day, CryptoZoo had sold $2.5 million in eggs. But then—sabotage. 

Logan Paul’s own development team scammed him, stole his hard-earned code, and escaped to Switzerland! They held the code hostage for $1 million and claimed to be “underpaid” when CryptoZoo had yet to be launched. As business mogul Kim Kardashian once said, “Get your fucking ass up and work. It seems like nobody wants to work these days.” Everyone knows that trainees should be paid lower wages during the trial stage of their employment! 

Cut to December 2022. President Biden calls for unity, deadly storms attack the east coast, and, unbeknownst to us Logan Paul stans, the best present is about to be dropped: A scandal. No, not the false rumour that Logan Paul abandoned his pig, Pearl (she was lovingly rehomed). But a trio of tell-all videos posted on YouTuber CoffeeZilla’s popular channel was about to change everything. CoffeeZilla set out to “uncover the truth” about CryptoZoo, making wild and unfounded claims that Logan Paul hired professional scam artists and criminals to develop this game to simply make himself money. While the “scam artist” allegation was true, they also scammed Paul out of $7.7 million dollars. So really, CoffeeZilla, Logan Paul is the real victim. 

Amidst the “scandal,” the Zoo token value jumped 1000 per cent in two weeks, proving that Logan Paul’s popularity is the key to a good investment. CryptoZoo investors who know what they’re doing are biding their time, knowing that their returns will be tenfold in the near future. As Logan said, CryptoZoo is coming. Who is CoffeeZilla to decide when the development timeline ends? Only Logan can decide that. So, while scumbags like CoffeeZilla make their money off of “investigative journalism,” CryptoZoo will be passively making its investors rich—at some point! 

Arts & Entertainment

What we liked this winter break

by Ella Buckingham, Kellie Erlick, Simi Ogunsola, Dana Prather, Adrienne Roy on

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The weather outside is frightful, but as always, the Tribune has media recommendations that are nothing short of delightful. Here is a breakdown of what the Arts & Entertainment section enjoyed over winter break.

Alice in Borderland (Season 2) 

Ella Buckingham, Staff Writer

(hardwarezone.com)

The much anticipated second season of Alice in Borderland, a Japanese thriller series streaming on Netflix, truly holds its own––no small feat in the shadow of its epic first season. Set in Borderland, an alternate reality where only a small percentage of the population is left and must play a variety of maniacal games in order to survive, the second season picks up right where the last one left off. The audience sees young gaming prodigy Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) and his friends battle their way through the trigger-happy marksman King of Spades (Ayumi Tanida), probing philosophical questions, and a prophetic nudist before the climatic last episode that will have viewers reeling. What the storyline lacks in complexity, the finale makes up for by deftly wrapping up an almost impossible number of loose strings. While a third season has not yet been confirmed, hopefully the joke’s on us and it will be coming soon. 

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery 

Dana Prather, Staff Writer

(mashable.com)

In the follow-up to 2019’s smash-hit Knives Out, the “world’s greatest detective” Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) returns to take part in another star-studded whodunit. Set a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Blanc finds himself frustrated and listless without a mystery to solve when he’s unexpectedly invited to a weekend-long murder mystery party on a private island by eccentric tech billionaire Miles Bron (a hilariously douchey Edward Norton). When a shocking real-life murder occurs, Blanc’s powers of deduction are put to the test. A stellar ensemble cast—Kate Hudson is a standout as vapid former model Birdie Jay—form Bron’s inner circle, serving as perfect targets for the film’s satirical jabs at America’s wealthy elite. Complete with stunning Greek island vistas and heart-warming, posthumous cameos from the likes of Stephen Sondheim and Angela Lansbury, Glass Onion is a fun-filled mystery that’s not to be missed. 

Ginny & Georgia (Season 2)

Simi Ogunsola, Contributor 

(people.com)

Peaaaaach, they’re backkkkk! For all the fans who stuck it out through the painful attempts at portraying Gen-Z, endless Ginny vs. Marcus blank staring contests, and complete destruction of the word “peach,” you’ll be pleased to know that season 2 of our beloved Ginny & Georgia is out now on Netflix! All of your favourite players—Cynthia (Sabrina Grdevich), Nick (Daniel Beirne), and I’ve-loved-you-since-I-was-15-Joe (Raymond Ablack)—are back to take you on an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything seen in season one. Viewers journey with Ginny as she grapples with the truth of her mother being a murderer. Ginny and audiences alike go back and forth between shock, anger, a desperation to understand, and maybe a reluctant relatability as they are forced to decide: Can good people do bad things? But don’t worry—whenever things are getting too serious, Max (Sara Waisglass) is back with a cringey line that makes you say, that’s enough internet for today. Head back to sweet, old Wellsbury for the second installment of “we’re-definitely-not-the-Gilmore-girls!”, with a side of intense reckoning with the fact that your superhero is human too. 

Anna Akhmatova: Selected Poems (Translated by D.M. Thomas)

Kellie Elrick, Contributor

(poetryfoundation.org)

My family sold my grandma’s house this past summer, and while moving everything out, we found no fewer than three copies of Anna Akhmatova: Selected Poems. Akhmatova’s poetry travels through the 20th century, from Imperial to Soviet Russia. My grandma read it during and after the Cold War. Today, it resonates more than ever: Cities move like people; colours laugh; the dead are the ones who smile. Akhmatova notably chose to stay in Russia during and after the Revolution, writing against the backdrop of friends and family being imprisoned, exiled, and executed by the Stalinist Regime. At times, time itself seems to freeze and the landscape of the poem is frozen over for a few stanzas, before melting again when Akhmatova transports the reader to the past. The reader bears witness to suffering in more solemn, common situations rather than big historical moments in newspapers: Through stories of women standing in prison queues in Leningrad during the Great Terror, tears melting ice, or a blue sky smeared with blood. But maybe these are big moments—maybe they would be lost without someone to write them down. I can see now why one copy wasn’t enough.

SZA: SOS

Adrienne Roy, Contributor

(genius.com)

Following her breakthrough debut album CTRL in 2017, SZA’s fans have been—not so patiently—awaiting her next record. Finally, on Dec. 9, 2022, the R&B singer released SOS, the second chapter of a story that tackles the intricacies of modern love—a diverse but wonderfully cohesive ode to her exes. A 23-track break-up album risks sounding redundant, but SZA’s sublime vocals and jarring yet vulnerable lyrics are her signature and help this record stand out. For these reasons, “Kill Bill,” inspired by Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 movie of the same name and “Low,” a subdued but high-tempo hit about keeping past relationships “on the lowski,” are clear highlights. Softer hits like “Nobody Gets Me” and “Ghost in the Machine (featuring Phoebe Bridgers)” testify to her willingness to venture outside her genre—possibly redefining it altogether. SZA proved that good things come to those who wait, as SOS is far from a cry for help: It’s a masterpiece. 

Editorial, Opinion

In debating existence, expect resistance

by The McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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On Jan. 10, McGill University’s Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (CHRLP) planned to host a talk entitled “Sex vs. Gender (Identity) Debate In the United Kingdom and the Divorce of LGB from T.” The debate featured Robert Wintemute, a human rights professor and lawyer with ties to the LGB Alliance—a notorious anti-transgender lobbying group in the U.K.—and purported to discuss whether laws should be amended so that changing one’s legal sex is made easier. In response, student groups such as RadLaw and Queer McGill staged a protest and the event was cancelled only minutes after it began. The event and its disruption spotlighted McGill’s shameless determination to platform a hateful organization that promotes discrimination against trans people, while aiming to sow division within the queer community. The university must apologize for once again prioritizing alleged academic freedom above the rights and safety of the students they claim to serve. 

The LGB Alliance claims to advocate for bisexual, lesbian, and gay causes, despite having tweeted that opposing same-sex marriage is not homophobic. The organization is also virulently anti-trans, supporting trans conversion therapy, promoting medical misinformation about trans people, and declaring that gender identity is a “lie.” Organizations like the LGB Alliance relentlessly pit marginalized groups against each other, claiming to be a champion for queer people while simultaneously attacking trans and nonbinary folks. This is a dangerous and divisive tactic often used by those who wish to maintain the status quo of oppression. 

McGill claims to be promoting academic debate by hosting Wintemute while also stating that individual events are not endorsements of specific views. In an email to law students following the event’s cancellation, Professor Robert Leckey, Dean of the Faculty of Law, suggested that protesters failed to live up to their commitment to “the exchange of ideas.” However, as highlighted by the open letter put forth by the protest’s organizers, the university’s rhetoric promotes a dangerous culture of intolerance. Such “conversations” that question trans dignity do not exist in an academic bubble of discourse. The hate group in question has exercised their political agenda by contributing to anti-trans bills and attempting to prevent reforms to the Gender Recognition Act in the U.K. The failure to consider the wider implications of giving a voice to transphobic ideology is indicative of McGill’s failure to foster a safe campus for its trans and non-binary students. 

Discourse that focuses on trans peoples’ very right to exist, aside from the egregious encouragement of discrimination and hate, moves the conversation away from the myriad ways that transgender people are disproportionately targeted. Trans people are over four times more likely to experience violent victimization than cisgender people, are significantly medically underserved in Canadian health care institutions, and are victims of hate crimes at skyrocketing levels in the country. In particular, racialized trans and non-binary individuals report more instances of sexual assault, harassment, and fear of police mistreatment.

Hate disguised as academic discourse subjects trans students to additional danger and discrimination. The very basis of the event ignores Canada’s colonial history of implementing Western legal structures seeking to delegitimize Two-Spirit identities in Indigenous communities. Anti-trans rhetoric has far-reaching consequences that disproportionately affect racialized transgender people and their communities: 68 per cent of transgender people of colour report mistreatment at the hands of a health provider, there is a worrying lack of access to gender-affirming care for Black transgender youth, and Black transgender women are incarcerated at 10 times the rate of their cisgender counterparts. Protesters were not only defending the rights of transgender individuals, but they were also upholding the principles of active and democratic citizenship. Opposing bigotry is precisely the responsibility of community members—especially in lieu of their unabashedly unprincipled university.

It is unacceptable for McGill or any other academic institution to provide a platform for a discriminatory agenda under the guise of freedom of speech. McGill’s leaders have a responsibility to ensure a safe, respectful campus for all students, and that includes not debating the validity of students’ existences on a public stage. We must stand in solidarity with trans and nonbinary folks, especially those already at the margins, and work towards creating a community where nobody’s right to dignity and respect is up for debate.

Album Reviews, Arts & Entertainment

‘NO THANK YOU’ poignantly hits back at the music industry 

by Yash Zodgekar on

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Something felt off amidst the accolades lavished upon Little Simz following her 2021 Mercury Prize-winning record Sometimes I Might Be Introvert. Be it by awarding her Best New Artist at the Brit Awards in 2022, despite having just released her fourth album in a decade-plus career, or through the postponement of her North American tour due to the financial strain of being an independent artist, the music industry has repeatedly defined Little Simz’s worth in commercial terms, rather than in terms of her artistry. 

NO THANK YOU sees Simz reflect on her complex relationship with an industry that too often treats Black artists as commercial tools. Its surprise release and minimal promotion subverts listeners’ expectations of what a follow-up to an artist’s most successful album can look like. Lyrically, Simz is introspective in her verses, lamenting the emotional toll of dealing with industry figures who prioritize paychecks and “sending their kids to private school” over her mental health, visible in the standout track “Angel.” Simz is direct in her approach, expressing frustration at herself for participating in the industry despite knowing she would lose agency: ‘What did I expect from those living the corporate life?’

Sonically, NO THANK YOU is more pared back than its predecessor, but Simz and collaborators Inflo, of Sault fame, and Cleo Sol maintain a strict precision to their work, with bursts of richness carefully chosen to amplify Simz’s most confessional moments. On “No Merci,” spurts of telephone rings form a call and response with tense orchestral strings before Simz’s frustration gives way to lush, liquid synths, as Cleo Sol’s backing vocals repeat the mantra ‘you can’t be their saviour.’ Meanwhile, “Gorilla” revisits some of the raucousness of Introvert with an anthemic horn section trading fours with low-strung bass and a dragging drum groove. 

Simz sustains a coolness in her demeanour, acknowledging the grim humour of her position as an independent artist by cracking jokes—for example, mocking the powerful and influential as ‘art collectors, silent investors, and film directors.’ Ultimately, her candour and wryness corroborate the merits of Simz’s approach; NO THANK YOU is a testament to the artistic value of Little Simz making music on her own terms. 

Science & Technology

McGill at COP15: A future for biodiversity?

by Dashiell Rich & Oban Lopez-Bassols on

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2020 was a year that marked the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public health crisis that spurred unprecedented timelines for vaccine development. However, 2020 should be infamous for another reason—it was one of the hottest years in history. Adding insult to injury, this was not some statistical outlier: The last eight years have all been categorized as the hottest on record. The average temperature has risen by 0.08 degrees Celsius—0.14 Fahrenheit—each decade since 1880, and since 1980, that rate has more than doubled to 0.18 Celsius.

Last month, while the Qatar World Cup engrossed millions, here in Montreal, an even more momentous event occurred: The 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Summit. Also known as COP15, the event concluded on Dec. 19 and saw almost 200 countries agree to the goal of halting and reversing biodiversity loss. With a “30 by 30” target, nations pledged to conserve 30 per cent of the world’s lands, seas, and inland waters by 2030. 

The targets put forth by the attending nations were grand in scope, with goals like cutting global food waste in half, reducing harmful pesticide usage, and acquiring $200 billion by 2030 dedicated to protecting biodiversity. Held at the Palais des congrès in downtown Montreal, the summit came two weeks after the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP27, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. In contrast, COP27 focused entirely on climate-related issues such as curbing carbon emissions and adapting to climate impacts. 

The fight for climate action has been difficult, with repeated setbacks like missing the 1.5 degrees Celsius world temperature target and nations’ failures to stick to emissions pledges. In many ways, biodiversity protection is as important as meeting climate targets because biodiversity upholds the world’s ecosystems—an environment with diverse species is more stable than a homogeneous one. The overharvesting of a couple of key species of marine life was a central discussion because of how it can break down ecosystems in unpredictable ways, along with the small-scale communities dependent on them.

Kristen Lalla, BSc ‘18, MSc ‘21, and current Physical Science Officer at Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), was a speaker at the conference. In an interview with The McGill Tribune, Lalla discussed her and the ECCC’s research after participating in the “Conservation Exchange: An innovative new approach to financing conservation” panel at COP15.  

“We’re working on developing a biodiversity indicator that will hopefully be able to quantify the biodiversity benefits of conservation projects,” Lalla said. “[The development] has involved a lot of reading, a lot of thinking and discussions both within the team and with others, and a lot of trying things out to figure out what works and what doesn’t [….] It’s not a super straightforward process.”

However, quantifying biodiversity efforts can be challenging because there are so many aspects to consider—population, habitat size, invasive species, and pollution. If these were left unchecked, species endangerment is a possibility.

“Species at risk are a priority in Canada […] and so those species at risk have legislative population distribution goals, and we can actually use those goals to estimate the benefits relative to those goals,” Lalla explained. 

By comparing the initial populations of at-risk species to post-conservation populations, a numerical value is generated to gauge the impact of preservation efforts. This initiative, known as the Conservation Exchange, will allow the Canadian government to dole out biodiversity certificates—something similar to carbon credits—to benefit entities who work on promoting preservation efforts. 

In addition to Lalla’s research, Kyle Elliot, a professor in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences and Canada Research Chair in Arctic Ecology, researches Arctic avian predator ecology. Professor Elliot’s research focuses on Arctic seabird migration—one of the many avian species that are impacted by biodiversity loss.

“We’re measuring the energetics—the energy expenditure and intake of arctic seabirds—and you can imagine them as being tiny little sampling devices for us,” Elliot said. “The traditional way of studying the Arctic would be with an icebreaker which does one track—$100,000 a day–and covers some small section of the arctic [….] They’re telling us something about what is happening in the ocean, and if they have to expend a lot more energy, then things may not be as good.”

Since seabirds, such as the thick-billed murre and ivory gull, are perched at one of the highest positions on the Arctic food chain, one can determine how well an ecosystem is doing by tracking the way these predators interact with their environment. Suppose a seabird population has to go a few kilometres further to get the same amount of calories as they did a decade prior. This would indicate a substantial drop in the birds’ prey population or in their prey’s habitat size.

Currently, ECCC has over 20 initiatives ranging from the ecological gifts program, which offers tax breaks for whoever donates the rights to ecologically sensitive land; the Aboriginal Fund for Species at Risk, which supports Indigenous leadership in wildlife conservation efforts; and the Habitat Stewardship Program, which funds projects that directly contribute to the fulfillment of recovery objectives and population goals for species that fall under the Species at Risk Act (SARA).

In COP meetings, governments arrive at conferences with their own objectives in mind, so reaching a consensus often requires considerable effort and involves stripping the final resolutions of many strong commitments. 

COP15’s plenary sessions saw negotiators continuously weakening proposed goals to get everyone on board. The United Kingdom delegates, for example, asked that criteria remain flexible and open to change, with other nations parroting the same complaint about the proposal’s perceived stringency.

As some wealthy countries pushed for ambitious new targets, representatives from the Global South, responsible for the world’s most biodiversity-rich ecosystems, focused on securing the funding needed to meet such goals. Toward the meeting’s end, several representatives from developing nations walked out to protest the lack of funding their countries were receiving. A prominent figure in this protest was the lead climate negotiator for Brazil, Leonardo Cleaver de Athayde. Representing the nation that arguably holds the most biodiverse forest on the planet, he was frustrated with a lack of genuine engagement from the other side of the table.

Despite these complications, the final result not only included the 30 by 30 agreement but also some commitments to fund different forms of biodiversity protection, such as promoting environmental awareness or reducing consumer waste. The European Union (EU) promised to double its international biodiversity financing to seven billion Euros for the 2021-2027 period, calling on other donors to match this effort. Countries also committed to mobilizing $200 billion USD per year in domestic and international biodiversity-related funding by 2030, with $30 billion USD per year in international finance (public and private) from “developed to developing states.” 

Though these are steep figures, the impact of these policies will only be felt if countries actually stick to the agreements reached. For instance, concerns surrounding the “30 per cent restoration of land and sea” goal stem from the fact that no baseline year was established for reference. 

The funding mechanism also remains vague regarding where the capital will come from and sounds eerily similar to past financing commitments that were never met. At the 2009 climate COP, countries agreed to raise $100 billion USD annually for climate action in developing countries by 2020. But this target has been missed every year so far.

All commitments to protect biodiversity still remain entirely dependent on the assumption that global warming will not decimate our environment. 

“It’s fantastic to have this agreement […] these types of aspirational goals are fantastic,” Elliot said. “It’s great to create national parks and protected areas in the Arctic, but it’s not going to do anything if climate change means there’s no Arctic left.” 

The enticing ambition of COP15 should be treated with caution and will require consistent pressure for meaningful success. If governments do not detail how to achieve such goals, reaching them will be nearly impossible. 

Hockey, Sports

Finally, some parity: The shifting landscape of international hockey competition

by Tillie Burlock on

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When it comes to international play in both men’s and women’s hockey, the conversation tends to revolve around two familiar suspects: Canada and the United States. Tournaments hosted by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF)—the international governing body for ice hockey—are dominated by discourse surrounding the two North American superpowers as fans wait for the ultimate matchup, usually in the gold or silver medal round. 

The dominance of these two countries is even more apparent in the IIHF’s under-18 and under-20 competitions. Since the inception of the men’s under-20 World Junior championship in 1977, Canada has won 20 gold medals, facing off against the U.S. five times since 2004. In women’s hockey, the pattern is even more glaring with the U.S. and Canada meeting in the gold-medal game every year since the creation of the under-18 Women’s World championship in 2008, with the exception of a U.S.-Sweden final in 2018.  

While the Canada-U.S. rivalry is what draws much of the viewing audience to IIHF tournaments, the past few years have shown the desperate need for parity within international competition. And in 2023, we got just that. 

At this year’s under-18 Women’s Worlds, the rising levels of competition were put on display as Czechia, Slovakia, Finland, and Sweden made their presence known. In the semifinal, the U.S. fell 2-1 to Sweden, with Astrid Lindeberg netting the game winner. The loss marks the first time the U.S. will not appear in the gold-medal game in tournament history. In the other semifinal, Finland forced Canada into overtime, and despite falling 3-2, the Finns made clear that they will no longer be pushed around on international ice. 

To follow up the 2022 NHL draft in which two Slovakians, Juraj Slafkovsky and Simon Nemec, went first and second overall, Slovakia started to establish itself as a force to be reckoned with. Tournament Most Valuable Player, Nela Lopušanová, a 14-year-old Slovakian forward, dominated with 12 points over five games and was a constant highlight reel. Lopušanová’s feats reveal themselves to be all the more remarkable when you factor in her play in the men’s under-16 league in Slovakia, where she is averaging 3.1 points per game. For context, Slafkovsky averaged 2.35 points per game in the same league. The scoring leaders illustrate the tournament’s newfound parity with Czechia’s Adéla Šapovalivová and Tereza Plosova, Sweden’s Hilda Svensson, and Slovakia’s Ema Tothova, joining Lopušanová in the top 10. 

As for the men’s 2022-23 under-20 World Junior tournament, Canada’s usually dominant team had some shaky moments, but this year, they weren’t against the U.S. On Dec. 26, Canada opened the tournament with a 5-2 loss to Czechia—a team without a gold-medal game appearance since 2001. 

The U.S. faced a similarly shocking 6-3 defeat against Slovakia—a country that is yet to appear in a gold medal game. As the prospect of a U.S.-Canada gold-medal match-up faded away, some began to turn toward stars of the rising European teams. 

Adam Gajan, a Slovakian goaltender who was not even listed on the team’s preliminary roster, took over the news cycle. The relatively unknown player skyrocketed to a potential second-round pick in the matter of a week. After a masterful 33-save performance against the U.S., Gajan shut out Latvia and carried his team to a nailbiter game against Canada in the quarterfinal. Despite falling short of a medal yet again, the Slovakian team proved that they are true contenders, adding a newfound level of parity to a tournament usually dominated by the Canadians, Americans, and Swedes. 

But the story doesn’t end there. After a somewhat underwhelming match-up against the U.S. in the semifinals where the Canadians claimed a 6-2 victory, Czechia defeated Sweden in a 2-1 overtime win to face off against Canada in the final. With Canada gaining a 2-0 lead early on, Czechia tied it up with less than 10 minutes to go, taking the game to a thrilling overtime but ultimately losing 3-2. Following two invigorating match-ups, many Canadian fans are left asking the question: Does Canada have a new rival?

McGill, News

McGill files for judicial review against law professors’ union certification

by Elena Lee on

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On Dec. 6, McGill filed for a judicial review of the Nov. 8 Tribunal administratif du travail (TAT)’s decision to certify the Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL) as a union. The appeal came a day before the case-law deadline to file such an objection: Applications for review must be filed within 30 days of receiving a decision. 

If McGill wins its suit, the previous decision of the TAT judge will be declared invalid. AMPL and the university administration will be sent back to the TAT for a second round of hearings to decide whether or not to keep AMPL certified. 

AMPL President Evan Fox-Decent had previously suggested that McGill might file an appeal. Fox-Decent believes that the appeal will serve as a “bargaining chip” for McGill as negotiations move forward according to schedule. According to Fox-Decent, the possibility of McGill overturning the certification is very slim due to the decisive nature of the 20-page TAT ruling. The union’s view is that the lawsuit is not directed toward AMPL in particular but serves as a warning for other faculties considering unionization. 

“As far as we are concerned, [the lawsuit] is a technicality—McGill has next to no chance of success,” Fox-Decent said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “We may be able to get the suit declared to be abusive litigation, which would compel McGill to then pay for our legal costs. We would seek to have them [cover our legal fees] only to prevent them from doing this in the future if other professors decide to organize.”

The prolonged litigation imposes a financial burden on both sides but, according to Fox-Decent, the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and La Fédération québécoise des professeures et professeurs d’université (FQPPU) support AMPL, both financially and ideologically. 

“I indicated that we would be there to support them in their legal costs and legal battle at this next stage,” CAUT executive director David Robinson told the Tribune. “We’re hopeful that this will be a pretty quick hearing [….] I think one of the reasons why the labour board was so comprehensive was that it was trying to make its decision appeal-proof. It’s hard to see where [McGill’s] argument is really going to come into play, so it’s just an annoyance more than anything.”

Officially, McGill’s reasons for challenging AMPL’s certification have remained the same as those originally used to oppose the union, with the administration citing “vast consequences” for the university if AMPL is granted union status as a faculty-specific association.

“Given the far-reaching impacts of this decision on McGill’s operations as a whole, the [a]dministration has a duty to see this process through to the end to ensure all impacts have been thoroughly considered and that they are, where relevant, incorporated into the application of the correct legal test,” McGill media relations officer Frederique Mazerolle wrote in an email to the Tribune. “While the [u]niversity continues to seek resolution to its concerns about the TAT decision, McGill is fully committed to negotiating with the new union.” 

Fox-Decent speculates that it will take about two years for the challenge to move through the TAT docket and into court. In the meantime, collective agreement negotiations have already begun.  

“As abusive and unnecessary and as wasteful of student funds and donations as the lawsuit […] is, the truth of the matter is, McGill probably isn’t going to get in front of a court for two years,” Fox-Decent said.

The second collective agreement negotiation meeting is scheduled for the third week of February.

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