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Editorial, Opinion

McGill’s silence on Iran unmasks its global negligence

by The Tribune Editorial Board on

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For an institution that prides itself on global engagement, McGill’s response to the crisis in Iran isn’t just inadequate—it’s indefensible. On Jan. 13, Dean of Students Tony Mittermaier sent an email to all students who hold an Iranian passport on McGill’s records. The message acknowledged the “civil unrest and disruptions to communications in Iran” and directed students to the Wellness Hub and GuardMe for mental health support. For academic accommodations, Mittermaier advised students to speak directly with their instructors. What the email did not provide was a clear, centralized protocol, or any standardized guidance to ensure that students receive consistent accommodations across courses. 

McGill regularly positions itself as a “globally engaged” institution. Still, as the Iranian government’s violent crackdown on protesters intensifies amid a nationwide internet blackout and mass arrests, the university has failed to offer comprehensive support systems for students and faculty during this time of crisis. 

The email’s recommendation that students speak directly with their instructors is not a neutral signal of support. It forces students to disclose personal distress as they navigate fear and uncertainty, unable to contact loved ones back home. This perfunctory response creates unequal access by design, as the accommodation outcome is likely to vary significantly depending on the instructor and the student’s comfort with disclosure. 

The McGill administration frequently offers vague, decentralized guidance to faculty members during exceptional circumstances and events, harming the consistency of accessibility measures. When this institutional obscurity is practiced during times of international crisis, students and faculty are left to face compounded uncertainty. 

McGill’s decision to only send this email to students with Iranian citizenship also raises the issue of visibility. Many students with loved ones or community in Iran do not hold an Iranian passport but are still deeply affected by the government’s violent repression of protestors. By deciding that passport-holders are the only appropriate recipients of this email communication, McGill is actively narrowing who gets recognized as impacted and, by consequence, who is connected with resources and support systems. 

Yet regardless of the mechanism through which administrators determine if a student ‘counts’ as Iranian for an email communication, McGill should express solidarity and treat international crisis as a collective, campus-wide concern. 

McGill has shown in the past that it can respond publicly and with empathy. When Russia launched its war on Ukraine in 2022, the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice-President issued a public statement strongly condemning the Russian invasion, expressing solidarity with Ukraine, and explicitly highlighting local and university-sanctioned resources available to McGill community members affected by the war, such as accelerated admissions and tuition waivers. McGill’s lack of institutional coordination to support students tied to Iran testifies to the university’s inconsistency in dictating how, when, and which students receive visibility, urgency, and empathy. This double standard is exacerbated by the disparity in enrollment numbers—in the 2024-2025 academic year, roughly 300 students with Iranian passports enrolled at McGill, compared to 17 students with Ukrainian passports. If McGill wants to continue claiming its title as a “motor of social inclusion,” it must confront and cease its discrepant treatment of different global crises. This is not a critique of McGill’s response to Ukraine—that statement reflected precisely the kind of institutional leadership and support students deserve during the crisis. The problem is: If the administration demonstrated its capacity for coordinated, public solidarity then, what explains its choice to withhold the same level of support now?

The gap between McGill’s stated values and its actions is hard to miss. For a university that emphasizes global engagement as central to its identity, its minimal, lacklustre response is striking. When McGill engagement is framed primarily through partnerships, prestige, recruitment, and research ties, while the university simultaneously neglects the well-being of its own community members by refusing to offer tangible support, it becomes extractive by default. If McGill wants to benefit from internationalism, it consequently inherits the obligation to uplift and advocate for the international and diasporic students who make this globalized status a reality. 

McGill can do better, and this does not require inventing a new system from scratch. Right now, the university’s approach makes the crisis in Iran feel unnecessarily isolated, when crisis communications should be public and centralized. By leaving students to rely on student associations and one-off conversations with professors, McGill is outsourcing its obligations in lieu of a proper response. 

If McGill cannot respond to global crises with the same standard of care every time, then that gap becomes a statement in itself. McGill has shown what it can do. Now is the time to apply that capacity consistently—because silence is a choice, and so is negligence.

News, PGSS, SSMU

SSMU BoD discusses PGSS food pantry access

by Eren Atac on

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The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Board of Directors (BoD) discussed restricting Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) members’ access to the SSMU food pantry, and approved new funding for Indigenous student aid during its meeting on Jan. 20.  

The discussion surrounding the food pantry stemmed from a motion approved at the most recent SSMU Legislative Council (LC) meeting, which proposed implementing a fee for PGSS members to access the service. SSMU Vice-President (VP) External Seraphina Crema-Black told the BoD that the motion’s final wording did not reflect the intent of the LC’s position. 

“We discussed what this motion would look like during the Legislative Council [meeting],” Crema-Black said. “During this discussion, we spoke of stopping the disallowance of the food pantry after a discussion about the fee levy had happened between PGSS and SSMU representatives. The motion was still approved in its writing.”

Crema-Black suggested disallowing the portion of the motion regarding PGSS members regaining access to the pantry, arguing that restricting access to the food pantry would disproportionately affect graduate students who rely on the service. In response, Alumni Representative Joshua Chin cautioned against overturning a decision approved by the Legislative Council without clear legal justification.

“Ultimately, I get the feeling that this motion is more or less a political decision that was approved by the Legislative Council,” Chin said. “I’d be uncomfortable disallowing based on purely political or convenience reasons, if really there’s no case to be made for legal or operational necessity.”

The board did not reach a definitive conclusion on restricting PGSS member access to the food pantry during the meeting.

The BoD also reviewed a report from SSMU Elections on the Fall 2025 referendum and Plebiscite questions. Chief Officer of SSMU Elections Mike Lee addressed voter turnout, noting that low participation was not due to a lack of awareness.

“So the analysis here is that SSMU members do vote,” Lee said. “When I first started, we really questioned whether people don’t vote because they simply didn’t know if they had to vote or not. This clearly shows that they do get their Simply Voting emails. They do know they can vote. It does depend on what they think is relevant.” 

The board later approved a motion allocating $180,000 CAD, drawn from the Indigenous affairs fee, in four installments over four years to fund Indigenous student aid and scholarships. VP University Affairs Susan Aloudat emphasized the motion’s goal of increasing accessibility for Indigenous students seeking to study at McGill, stating that SSMU wants the application process for scholarships to be non-invasive. 

“Our mandate is to support and empower our Indigenous students,” Aloudat said. “We want to encourage Indigenous student enrollment. The idea is that McGill was supposed to increase how many Indigenous students we had, but we actually found that it’s decreasing. So the purpose of this award is to decrease the barriers to entry to education at McGill as much as possible for Indigenous students.”

The board also ratified a revised 2025–26 budget previously approved by the Legislative Council, suspending a section of the Internal Regulations of Finance that required applicants to submit a report before obtaining funding. The board also appointed Directors Simon Ngassam and Adam Corbier to the Accountability Committee, Director Ngassam to the Governance Reform Committee, and Directors Maxime Rouhan and Annette Yu to the Nominating Committee. The meeting concluded with a confidential session.

Moment of the Meeting

The board approved an advance loan of $60,000 CAD for MustBus, a student-run SSMU service group which provides transportation for students. 

Soundbite

“I think that it’s very, very bad for the SSMU’s reputation if we go ahead with [pulling PGSS access to the food pantry] [….] We’ve been speaking with them about a fee levy and introducing a fee for the food pantry. I want to know whether that’s something that they would consider before we pull access, especially because it’s used disproportionately by PGSS members, and food insecurity is a very important issue.” — VP External Seraphina Crema Black on the motion to restrict PGSS access to the SSMU food pantry.

A previous version of this article contained inaccuracies regarding discussions and decisions at SSMU’s Board of Directors meeting. In fact, the board did not debate restricting access, which was discussed at Legislative Council; Director Crema-Black did not formally move a motion regarding Food Pantry access, and the matter was instead referred to Legislative Council; the board did not suspend the Internal Regulations of Finance in full, but only a limited section related to funding disbursement and reporting; and several directors were appointed to multiple committees. The Tribune regrets these errors.


Football, Sports

Indiana’s impossible season ends in a National Championship

by Zain Ahmed on

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In a defining moment for college football, the Indiana University Hoosiers capped a perfect 16–0 season by beating the University of Miami Hurricanes 27-21 in the College Football Playoff National Championship on  Jan. 18 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. What makes this title run truly historic is not just the undefeated record, but the context behind it: A program that just a few years ago finished 3–9; a quarterback once overlooked by Miami itself; and a 64-year-old coach who rewrote expectations faster than anyone expected.

Head Coach Curt Cignetti arrived in Bloomington just two years before the championship and inherited a team with one of the worst recent records in Division I history. By the time the title game rolled around, his Hoosiers had transformed into the number one team in the nation, the Big Ten champions, and consensus national champions. Cignetti’s path was storied, from Division II stops to the pinnacle of college football. He lived up to his coaching lifer reputation with his measured leadership and bold fourth-down calls in the championship game which rewrote the narrative on what a turnaround could look like.

The emotional core of Indiana’s story was quarterback Fernando Mendoza. Originally from the Miami area, Mendoza transferred from the University of California, Berkley and became the heartbeat of Indiana’s offence. In the championship game, he completed 16 of 27 passes for 186 yards and rushed for a crucial 12-yard touchdown on 4th-and-4 late in the fourth quarter, which was the play that shifted momentum and gave the Hoosiers a 24-14 lead they would not relinquish. He would earn Offensive Player of the Game honours for his efforts.

Earlier in the season, Mendoza had already collected a shelf-full of awards, including the Heisman Trophy, the Maxwell Award, the Davey O’Brien Award, and Walter Camp Player of the Year, leading the Big Ten in key passing categories.

Indiana set the tone early with a sustained opening drive, capping it with a 34-yard field goal by kicker Nico Radicic to take a 3-0 lead. They followed with a methodical march downfield ending in a 1-yard touchdown run by tight end Riley Nowakowski, putting them ahead 10-0 at halftime. The Hoosiers’ defence, disciplined and opportunistic throughout the night, held Miami’s explosive offence in check through the opening two quarters. 

Miami cut the deficit to 10-7 with a long rushing score by Mark Fletcher Jr., but Indiana responded in spectacular fashion: Defensive lineman Mikail Kamara blocked a punt, which Isaiah Jones recovered in the end zone for a touchdown, flipping the energy of the game back to the Hoosiers’ favour. That play kept Indiana ahead despite Miami’s persistent rally attempts.

With the Hurricanes closing the gap to 17-14 in the third quarter, Cignetti’s offence manufactured a late game-defining drive: On 4th-and-5 from Miami’s 37, Mendoza connected with Charlie Becker for a 19-yard first down. On 4th-and-4, Mendoza’s bruising 12-yard run gave the Hoosiers a convincing lead with under ten minutes to play. Miami continued to fight back, cutting the lead to 24-21, but a late interception by Jamari Sharpe sealed the title for Indiana.

This was not a championship built on one game alone; it was the culmination of a 16–0 season, the first perfect campaign in modern college football since Yale University in 1894, and the first national championship in program history. Their path included a stunning Big Ten Championship Game win over Ohio State, 13-10, with Mendoza orchestrating the offence, a 38-3 Rose Bowl rout of Alabama, and dominance in the Peach Bowl vs. Oregon, winning 56-22. For a team with one of the lowest composite roster talent rankings in Power-4 football, Indiana’s rise to the top was nothing short of remarkable.

Focusing on disciplined coaching and clutch performances, Indiana carved a place and identity for itself that few analysts saw coming. From Cignetti’s improbable ascent to Mendoza’s poetic redemption against his hometown program, this Hoosier season will not just be remembered, it will be studied as history. In the annals of college football lore, Indiana’s 2025 campaign will be looked back on as a legacy-defining moment that will be studied for years to come.

McGill, Montreal, News, SSMU

QPIRG-McGill encourages students to run for SSMU

by Russel Ismael on

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On Jan. 22, McGill’s Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG-McGill) chapter held an information session on how to run for student government positions at the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), titled “Fix Student Democracy.” The talks explored how student involvement in these administrative positions can enact positive change for the undergraduate student body.

In an interview with The Tribune, Nelly Wat, outreach coordinator at QPIRG-McGill, emphasized the importance of holding educational events.

“QPIRG really tries to serve as a hub for students who are really invested in social and environmental justice,” Wat said. “What we try to do is keep students politically engaged and connected with their community.”

Former SSMU Vice-President External Hugo-Victor Solomon began the talk with an overview of how the SSMU is run, illustrating how students can pursue their passions through student government. 

Throughout his tenure, Solomon pursued goals such as increasing visibility of the Mohawk Mothers, ratifying the Policy Against Genocide in Palestine, and implementing a fee for Francophone initiatives. Solomon described these projects as part of his vision to run SSMU as a union.

“A union has an obligation to deliver for its membership. A business has an obligation to deliver for its shareholders to protect its own kind of commercial well-being,” Solomon said. “You should not accept that type of framework, even though it might feel a bit more easy.”

Solomon also cautioned potential candidates against overworking themselves for a SSMU position. He advised that candidates should instead economize their work.

“Understanding where your [political] pressure is most effective will be kind of the difference between burning out and getting nothing done and accomplishing as many of your goals as possible,” Solomon said. “There’s a large number of people [on the External Affairs] team, and if you can cultivate a shared team identity and pursue goals that everybody already cares about, it can actually be really fun.”

Some SSMU representatives, however, find it difficult to optimize political authority due to perceived systemic issues. The next presenter, a SSMU employee who wished to remain anonymous, criticized SSMU for its alleged restructuring of political power, moving authority from General Assemblies (GAs) to the Legislative Council. The member argued that this change is detrimental to student democracy.

“GAs are the highest governing body of a student union,” the member explained. “One of the most telling things about how bad SSMU is right now is that they never hit quorum with their GAs unless there’s a vote on Palestine happening. So there are a bunch of democratic things that have been pushed to the side in SSMU.”

They also expressed their discontent toward SSMU’s handling of Midnight Kitchen (MK)—which SSMU shut down in October 2025 without consulting the kitchen’s staff. The member stated that, after MK was shut down, SSMU reappropriated its democratically allocated funding to instead hire private catering companies. 

The member was also alarmed by the new Student Code of Conduct, which was approved by both student senators and the SSMU executive team on Nov. 12. They claimed that the new Code of Conduct facilitates punishments for students involved in political activism, citing an alleged uptick in the number of disciplinary cases made against students by the university.   

However, SSMU President Dymetri Taylor disputes these claims, writing in an email to The Tribune that, had student senators not engaged with the administration, the outcomes for undergraduates would have been worse. He also explained that if the Code is causing too many issues for students, then student senators will petition for amendments.

“On the claim that there’s been a sudden increase in disciplinary cases this semester, that’s not accurate,” Taylor wrote. “There was definitely more enforcement activity around the [pro-Palestine] strikes, but that’s because people were blocking classes from taking place, which has always been against the Code.”

The member also alleged that these issues stem from the McGill administration’s intervention in SSMU, stating that these systemic changes were made at the request of President and Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini and Interim Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Angela Campbell. They alleged that issues such as limited student services funding and strikes became more difficult to organize as a result of these changes. 

However, Taylor asserted that these framings are incorrect. He stated that the lack of student funding is due to the student body voting against an increase and that SSMU, as a student society, cannot legally mandate strikes like a union can.

“We’ve been working more productively with [McGill] in order to get results and make sure student voices are heard. But the idea that people are doing this for personal gain isn’t true,” Taylor wrote. “In my experience, only a couple of executives in prior years approached the role that way, and they’re, thankfully, no longer here.”

Due to these issues, the member believes that SSMU finds itself in a precarious situation. They listed how many other organizations, such as the Concordia Student Union and Co-op Bar Milton-Parc, are more hesitant to work with SSMU now because of this paradigm shift. Despite this, the member is still optimistic about SSMU’s future.

“Those systems, those relationships are all being eroded really, really quickly in a way that is going to be hard to come back from,” the member said. “But it will just take people who are elected, who are motivated, who are excited about political change to change that and undo the damage that’s been done.”

Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

‘Partition’ views Palestine from the interwar period to modern-day experiences

by Josette Chandler on

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McGill’s Department of Anthropology and the Institute for the Study of International Development hosted a screening and Q&A session for Diana Allan’s film Partition on Wednesday, Jan. 14, at McGill’s Critical Media Lab (CML). Allan, a filmmaker and professor of Anthropology at McGill, considers Partition a collaborative work; other members of the lab—Co-Directors Lisa Stevenson and Megan Bradley, as well as Associate Director Julian Flavin—worked on the film with Allan.

When Allan introduced her film, she emphasized how the project would not have been possible without the people she worked with at the CML.

“[This film] is a product of this space and the friendships and collaborations that it has enabled,” Allan said. “If Montreal is the home of [this film], CML is the heart [….] Thank you for the partners in this project.”

Partition explores the impact of British colonialism in Palestine by combining 1900s black-and-white visuals with modern-day audio and stories. The film showcases photos and footage from the time of the British Mandate for Palestine, which spanned from 1917 to the establishment of an Israeli state in 1948. The footage, which was recorded by British soldiers, depicted daily Palestinian life as well as British military activity during the mandate.

The archival footage is taken from the Imperial War Museum Collection in London, accompanied by music and interviews from Allan’s own collection. 

“[The film] was bifocal in the sense that you’re seeing images from 100 years ago and sound from today,” Allan said.

Partition is not Allan’s first attempt to shed light on the ongoing genocide in Palestine through film. She has published a book, “Refugees of the Revolution: Experiences of Palestinian Exile,” which explores the daily struggles of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. She is also the co-director of the Nakba Archive, an oral history collective recording and commemorating Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who lived through the Nakba.  

Allan focuses on the Palestinian experience, with all language in the film either written or spoken in Palestinian Arabic. Throughout the film, she interviews Palestinians about their lived experiences, as well as their families’ experiences in Palestine. Much of the film revolved around interviews with Sumaya, a former student of Allan’s. Through these interviews, Allan shares modern-day stories of Palestine as well as historical ones through the accounts of Sumaya’s family. 

In the Q&A session, Allan explains how this documentary shares similarities with many of her other films. Like Partition, Allan’s other films focus primarily on the human condition—specifically memory and the emotional impact it can have on the lives of refugees.

“All of my films have been about memory [….] Reference photos and through movement, through space, activates this sort of process of memory, and this form is about the experience of the archive itself,” Allan said.  

Paloma Masel, U2 Arts, said that the film’s focus on memory and human experience drew her to the screening. She emphasized the role of a traditional song Sumaya referred to as “the camel driver’s song.”

“That song being followed by what sounded like the songs of thousands of families […] that might have gone through that sort of trauma really stuck with me,” Masel said. “And I wanted to hear more encapsulation of that […] experience in the final sequence.” 

Before the Q&A began, Lisa Stevenson, co-director of the CML, warned attendees about using colonial images, as they could risk inadvertently uplifting colonial oppressors.

“I think that working with the colonial images is a very faulty endeavour and there’s a danger of you, obviously, questioning forms of colonial violence, that are the context for the making of these images and how you both make these images visible, these histories visible,” Stevenson said.

By using this footage in a film centred on the Palestinian cause, told by Palestinians themselves, Allan repurposes a tool of imperial control as a testimony of resistance against occupation. 

Allan shows aerial and ground surveillance footage, women hiding their faces from British soldiers, and British bombings of Palestine during the British Mandate. Palestinians were encouraged or forced to join the British military, which had placed them under constant watch. 

“You’re aware of the colonial violence. You’re very aware of the colonial gaze,” Allan says. “Images that seem to carry that kind of violence, […] something really malicious, frightening, and fearful. By the end, we transformed it into something else.”

Science & Technology

Take the Tribune’s Science and Technology quiz

by Malika Logossou on

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In 1989, Alan Emtage, a graduate and system administrator at McGill, created the first Internet search engine, which present-day search engines still rely on. What did he call his search engine?

a) WebCrawler
b) Yahoo
c) Archie
d) ChatGPT

As of Fall 2025, which faculty had the largest number of students enrolled?

a) Arts
b) Medicine and Health Sciences
c) Science
d) Engineering

Two of the three ‘Godfathers’ of Artificial Intelligence are Canadians. Who are they?

a) Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio
b) Ray Solomonoff and Arthur Samuel
c) Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio
d) Yann LeCun and Alan Turing

Which of these CEGEPs was named after a McGill alumnus?

a) LaSalle College
b) Dawson College
c) Marianopolis College
d) Vanier College

In what year did Carrie Derrick become Canada’s first female professor, having been appointed as a Professor of Morphological Botany at McGill?

a) 1912
b) 1950
c) 1963
d) 1934

McGill was the first Canadian university to award a degree in which discipline?

a) Medicine 
b) Arts
c) Engineering 
d) Religious Studies

The first McGill psychology course was taught in 1850, but psychology did not become its own department at the university until 1922. Under which department did psychology originate?

a) Sociology
b) Philosophy
c) Biology
d) Anthropology

Who was the second Canadian woman to go to space and the first to board the International Space Station, all while holding a degree from McGill?

a) Valentina Tereshkova
b) Katy Perry
c) Roberta Bondar
d) Julie Payette

Answers:
c) Archie
a) Arts
c) Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio
b) Dawson College
a) 1912
a) Medicine
b) Philosophy
d) Julie Payette

Basketball, Know Your Athlete, Sports

Know Your Athlete: Lily Rose Chatila

by Lialah Mavani on

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Growing up in Quebec City, Martlets Basketball Guard Lily Rose Chatila, U3 Science, found basketball by chance. At just 10 years old, she was introduced to the sport unexpectedly while watching her older sister’s High School Musical school play. What began as a coincidence has since grown into a defining part of her life. Now at 22 years old, Chatila is one of the Martlets’ key players, steadily making her mark in McGill basketball history.

On Jan. 17, Martlets Basketball faced the Concordia Stingers after falling short just two days prior. After a quick turnaround, the team captured a decisive 62-51 win over the Stingers, with Chatila leading on the scoreboard. The young guard scored 33 points, with the majority of her points coming from two-point field goals and free throws. Chatila’s historic performance measures up to a previous record set in 2008 by Catherine Parent, making her one of four Martlets to ever score 33 or more points in a game.

Despite her outstanding results, Chatila reflected that she is not focusing on the score in most games. 

“I wasn’t necessarily aware of my points, but just the flow of the game was really good. I think it was one of our best games,” Chatila said. “[The] team gets really good things off of our defence, and we had amazing defence, which we put into offence.”

Like most varsity athletes, Chatila has had her fair share of injuries, and this season was no exception. In October she suffered a minor concussion, and in December she had a quadricep strain, which put her out of the team’s matchups before winter break.

Reflecting on how injuries can reshape an athlete’s perspective, Chatila extended lessons she learned off the court before facing the challenge of returning to play. Recovery is rarely straightforward, and navigating a season marked by injuries takes a toll not only on the athlete, but on the team as a whole.

“I just want to go and give my best, because yes, I’ve had one game that I played well, and then the next I couldn’t play,” Chatila said. “Our biggest thing this year is for every game to go out there and give our best, because it’s really up and down for injuries.”

Looking ahead at her remaining time at McGill, Chatila is optimistic about remaining a force to be reckoned with on court—despite not having any specific records in mind to break.

“My main goal is going to be to try and stay consistent,” Chatila said. “Obviously, I want to improve on everything. You always want to keep improving, but I think for me, the key is going to be consistent in practices and games, and then the summer, to be consistent with the work I’m putting in.”

Beyond her personal experience on the court, Chatila also touched on the broader landscape of women’s sports and the responsibility that comes with being a high-level university athlete. Reflecting on her journey from a chance introduction to basketball to becoming a leader on the Martlets roster, she emphasized the importance of confidence, perseverance, and embracing opportunity, especially for young women athletes hoping to carve out a place for themselves in the game.

“Even when it’s going good, bad, or not the way you want it to, I think if you’re surrounded by a good group [of people] and your mindset is right, you can find ways to have fun,” Chatila said. “Even if you lose some games, I think the important thing is, really, to enjoy it. Because if you don’t, then I don’t really think there’s a point to doing it, especially at a high level. Just enjoy it and make sure you surround yourself [with] a team where you feel like you can be yourself.”

Arts & Entertainment, Exhibition

Sixty years of song and community celebrated at the Marvin Duchow Music Library

by Dylan Hing on

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Since its inception 60 years ago, the Marvin Duchow Music Library has seen McGill students through the good, the bad, and the never-ending tears that accompany late-night cramming sessions. Wandering the aisles for the first time, I passed towering shelves lined with scores of music I doubt I will ever learn to decipher. Compared to the hectic atmosphere of rue Sherbrooke below, the library feels like a greenhouse for one of the most instinctive forms of art.

To mark its anniversary, the library is presenting Marvin Duchow Music Library at 60: Interplay of Community, Service, and Discovery, exhibiting artifacts drawn from the library and the university’s archives, with one display near the entrance and another inside. When I first explored the exhibit, a bright red record from 1982, featuring the McGill Symphony Orchestra conducted by Uri Mayer, immediately caught my eye. Like the musicians themselves, the record’s bold colours draw viewers into the intertwined histories of the Schulich School of Music and its ever-evolving library.

Rather than simply documenting the library’s history, the exhibit celebrates the efforts of those who sustained the space as a resource for the music community on campus and beyond. Marvin Duchow, a former Schulich School of Music Dean, understood how integral these two institutions were to each other. In a featured address to the Canadian and American Music Library Associations, he emphasized the reciprocal role music faculties and libraries play in sustaining one another.

Also featured are various administrative and informational artifacts, including a visitors’ log, The McGill Daily’s articles detailing students’ and librarians’ fight for a larger facility, photographs showing the library’s various iterations, and words from the many librarians who have looked after the collection over the decades. An obituary for Marvin Duchow is, of course, featured prominently in the collection—a fitting tribute to the man who dedicated himself to the pursuit of community knowledge.

Through the care taken in curating the exhibit and the honouring of those who fought for the library, the space is not only celebrated as somewhere to study but as a necessary resource for musicians. In a featured statement, former head librarian Cynthia Leive underscored the library’s role as a learning institution on its 25th anniversary.

“Students […] haven’t the years and money necessary to build a personal collection of books and scores,” Leive said. “So they start by coming here [….] They become more interested, more literate, and start studying scores [….] What they will take away with them is a love of music and knowledge, and of learning that will be with them for the rest of their lives. That, in essence, is the spirit of the library.”

The exhibit exemplifies Duchow’s belief that libraries are the heartbeat of an academic community by focusing on both the library’s evolution in the Elizabeth Wirth building and on the strong connection to its faculty. The library is loved through the care that librarians and staff put into keeping it going, day and night, for whatever one might need. The library, as its namesake hoped it would, continues to reflect the changing needs of the musicians it houses. Of course, the one thing that never changes is the music community’s commitment to protecting the space. 

In 1975, a decade after the library’s opening, Librarian Emirata Kathleen Toomey humorously recounted the quirks that come with her job, highlighting the work the exhibit celebrates. Her words, like the exhibit itself, find hope in the library’s future through the foundations of the past, and still resonate on its 60th anniversary.

“A library is not always such a frivolous place,” Toomey said. “There are those who rely on it for their life’s work, and it is of prime importance that it continues to grow—especially in its holdings. If the past ten years are an example of things to come, I can foresee only a bright future ahead.”

Student Life

In search of books

by Ella Paulin on

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You never know what you will find with a keen eye in a good library. While library databases bring the world of academic publications to your fingertips, there’s something about wandering the stacks, leafing through covers, and stumbling across unexpected gems that the library website’s “Browse the Shelf” function just can’t replicate.

With the majority of books at the McLennan Library having been moved off-site for the sake of the Fiat Lux renovation project—which is now indefinitely suspended—it might be time to start finding alternative places to browse. For those who never checked out books in person but are now finding that empty, bereft stacks deepen the despair of a late-night study session, read on for some suggestions of alternative study spaces.

If you’re in search of good books—or just a better studying backdrop—here are some places to check out. 

Quebec Public Interest Research Group McGill (QPIRG McGill) Alternative Library

QPIRG McGill’s library, located on av. du Parc, just 10 minutes from campus, is a great spot if you are looking for politically engaged books that challenge traditional power structures and go beyond the dominant narratives of your textbooks. They have a great selection of activist non-fiction books, zines, and graphic novels. You can browse their catalogue online or check out their cozy physical library space. 

The Union for Gender Empowerment (UGE) Alternative Library

Conveniently located on the top floor of the SSMU building, the UGE offers a curated selection of books with a focus on queerness, gender, sexuality, and feminist studies. The collection includes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and zines, and the office contains armchairs and a couch if you want to test-drive your selections before checking out. 

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) 

The BAnQ’s Grande Bibliothèque, located 15 minutes away from campus on rue Berri, is one of the only libraries in Montreal that can rival McLennan-Redpath in size. Although the English selection is a little thin, it’s worth checking out, and you can easily register for a free library card if you go in person. It’s also a great place to work if you’re getting sick of McGill’s study spaces.

If you’re one of the many McGill students currently trying to learn French, the BAnQ can also be an opportunity to find free reading and listening material. If you go in person, check out their large collection of bandes dessinées (graphic novels) on the second floor. After getting your library card, you can also access their online collection of audio and e-books. 

Concordia’s Webster Library

While you can’t check out books as a McGill student, you can always wander into Concordia’s main library during opening hours, browse the shelves, and pretend you’re a student of a university with a functional library space. The collections at Concordia skew newer than those at McGill as well, so there’s always an interesting find waiting for you in the stacks.

Bonus: There is something left in the McLennan Library

While the books have been removed, the second floor’s microfilm collection remains onsite. While the collection can be hard to engage with at first, if you spend some time exploring, you’ll find some unexpected treasures—from 100-year-old New York Times articles to declassified CIA documents from the 1950s. If something catches your eye, there’s a viewing room on the second floor with machines to enlarge the film. 

Science & Technology

The link between mental health and breathlessness

by Sammi Lai on

More in Science & Technology:

Have you ever trudged through the snow up rue University, about to write a final exam that will make or break your grade? By the time you reach the top of that hill, you might be feeling more out of breath than usual. 

A recent study involving Dennis Jensen, a clinical exercise and respiratory physiologist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Center (RI-MUHC), reveals that anxious and depressive feelings may intensify the sensation of breathlessness during exercise and in daily life. In this case, breathlessness, also referred to as shortness of breath or dyspnea, a feeling of struggling to take in enough air into the lungs, is estimated to affect one in ten adults.

“These are people that, oftentimes because of their health condition, experience breathlessness that can become so difficult and so severe and so unpleasant that they avoid physical activity. In that way, it becomes disabling,” Jensen explained in an interview with The Tribune. “They start to make decisions around not climbing stairs, not going for a walk, not participating in activities of daily life that require physical activity with friends and family [….] The burden of breathlessness or breathing discomfort becomes an impediment to them to lead physically active lifestyles.” 

Jensen and his colleagues analyzed a cohort of 1155 adults between the ages of 40 and 91. They found that increased symptoms of depression correlated with greater breathlessness in daily life. The researchers also identified a strong association between both depression and anxiety and increased breathlessness during exercise, or exertional breathlessness. 

These relationships remained even after controlling for factors that may otherwise affect one’s degree of breathlessness, including age, sex, body mass index (BMI), smoking status, and the presence of heart and lung conditions such as asthma, cardiovascular disease, and obstructive lung disease. By controlling for these confounding variables, Jensen and his team identified anxiety and depression as independent contributors to breathlessness. 

“We used this large cohort to examine the associations between people’s self-reports of anxiety and depression using a standard scale called the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale,” Jensen said.

Participants also self-reported their experience of exertional breathlessness in daily life and completed the Cardiopulmonary Exercise Test (CPET), the gold standard for assessing breathlessness during exercise. Sports scientists commonly use the CPET to measure VO2 max, which describes how efficiently one’s body circulates and uses oxygen. The test typically has participants pedal a cycle ergometer, also known as a stationary bike, and breathe through a mouthpiece, all while the bike’s resistance slowly increases.

“While I think our results are important and an important step forward, we recognize that the analysis was cross-sectional, so we didn’t follow people over time,” Jensen said. “While the exercise test was very standardized, and I would say the gold standard, and while the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale is a widely used screening tool for symptoms of anxiety and depression, it wasn’t clinically diagnosed.”

The researchers believe that clinically diagnosed depression or anxiety could potentially show even stronger associations with breathlessness, especially in the unstable, non-laboratory setting of stressful daily life. Thus, this study points to the idea that by treating symptoms of anxiety and depression, we can potentially alleviate daily and exertional breathlessness. 

“Say, for example, […] you’ve taken somebody with a lung disease and you’ve optimized their condition with inhaled steroids and bronchodilators and stuff, but they’re still breathless [….] Maybe you have to dig a little bit deeper and recognize that some of the residual breathlessness might not go away unless you address the comorbid anxiety or depression,” Jensen explained.

Overall, Jensen’s research supports existing observations on the link between anxiety and depression with greater exertional breathlessness in daily life, and it is the first to show that this association is also reflected in greater exertional breathlessness during a standardized CPET.

“Anxiety and depression and breathlessness, you know, all of them have independent effects on quality of life. I think ultimately, we not only want to understand […], but to make people’s lives better through the work that we do,” Jensen said. 

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