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McGill denies School of Social Work’s decision to hold classes virtually until February 25

by Madison Edward-Wright on

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In light of the increased transmissibility and ongoing health risks posed by the Omicron variant, McGill’s School of Social Work announced via email on Jan. 4 that it would extend online learning until at least Feb. 25. The McGill Tribune obtained the Jan. 4 email and several others, including one sent two days later, on Jan. 6, informing students the university had refused the School’s decision. 

Many students in the faculty, including Jo Roy, U3 Social Work, were disheartened by the news.

“[Getting the second email] was like a punch in the face,” Roy said. “I blame McGill for its intimidation, and essentially bullying, of not just our school, but of other faculties in McGill as a whole.”

In accordance with the Quebec government’s Dec. 17 announcement that universities cannot hold in-person classes until Jan. 17, McGill announced on Dec. 31 that classes would be held virtually until at least Jan. 24. This announcement excluded Tier 1 activities, such as labs, clinical courses, and music classes, which cannot be conducted remotely. 

Social work students, however, have opposed the projected return date, citing risks to themselves, the institutions they work in—such as hospitals, centre local de services communautaires, and centres d’hébergement et soins de longue durée—and the communities they serve as reasons to continue virtual learning until safe to return in-person. 

“[There are] forty or so people in [my] cohort, and if you take the students [doing stages] in the second year cohort […] that is close to nearly 100 points of impact for COVID to go around into vulnerable communities,” Roy said. “We go into other community-based organizations in primarily marginalized, racialized communities [….] I do not want any of us to be points of spread for these communities.”

Codey Martin, U3 Social Work, was not surprised by McGill’s decision. Like Roy, Martin feels the return to in-person classes does not prioritize the wider Montreal community’s health and safety, but says he will continue to work with those he serves despite the circumstances.

“The work I do goes on regardless, with education or without education,” Martin said in an interview with the Tribune. “It is the natural law to a helper, to always help people in need of helping. But at the same time, I am sure many across the McGill community probably have some tough decisions to make.”

Many social work students have begun to explore potential action they can take to communicate their disagreement to McGill. In addition to consulting with the Students’ Society of McGill University and the Social Work Student Association, students have met with law professor Richard Gold to understand the legal grounds upon which McGill made the decision.

In an email interview with the Tribune Gold claimed that McGill’s central administration has no basis for making the School of Social Work return to in-person teaching given the adoption of a Course Delivery Parameter for the Winter 2022 Academic Term at the Nov. 17 McGill Senate meeting. 

“In the fall, at the initiative of the administration, [the] Senate adopted […] guidelines for online teaching,” Gold wrote. “While it recommended that 80 per cent of teaching be in-person, it left the actual decision to [individual faculties] [….] Rather than respect the guidelines for which it itself advocated, [the administration] is ignoring them.”

At the request for comment on this situation, McGill media relations officer Frédérique Mazerolle, on behalf of the McGill administration, wrote that the university remains dedicated to student health and wellbeing.
“The uncertainty around the impact of the new Omicron variant remains high,” Mazerolle wrote in an email to the Tribune. “However, we intend to return to in-person education as soon as safely possible and when government directives permit. Our planning for Winter 2022 remains flexible and if the COVID-19 situation changes, we have contingency plans in place.”

Features

How McGill fails Palestinian students

by Maya Abuali on

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​​Growing up, introducing myself was a persistent gamble. When I, inevitably, would say that I was Palestinian, the words would taste heavy with reluctance. They were never just accepted as a crucial part of my identity, but instead as a political statement, an invitation for debate, and in some unfortunate cases, an incitement of blatant racism. Still, I consider myself lucky that I grew up in Southeast Asia, and not, say, the United States, where saying you were Palestinian could be considered an act of verbal terrorism—until maybe last year.

Needless to say, receiving this kind of reaction was always frustrating. Containing my exasperation has not gotten easier. To me, there is a very distinct similarity between Palestinian anger and female anger: When you describe your oppression, you are often belittled, dismissed, and infantilized, which only serves to exacerbate your irritation. My grandmother, who was born in Bethlehem, would always say that emotions are our people’s fatal flaw. She advised me to maintain a cool head when telling our side of history, lest our message get lost in emotional translation. But being a fervently nostalgic people, maintaining this even temperament seems to be unrealistic for most Palestinians—particularly when we are told to our faces that our country is not real, or when we wake up to news of another child dead. It provokes the kind of rage that makes you stare daggers at a tub of hummus in the middle of a supermarket because it was created by an Israeli company that profits from stealing your culture.

As I got older, I learned to deal with the reactions I received when introducing myself, and my trepidation dissolved into an unwavering sense of duty. Now at university, among friends and coworkers, I constantly refer to myself as the “annoying Palestinian,” given my incessant and unflinching ability to link any topic of conversation to my ethnicity. As much as this may seem like a slightly obnoxious personality quirk, it is a habit that is ingrained in me and many other diaspora Palestinians to desperately remind those around us that we exist and that our people are still struggling.

I visited Palestine for the first time when I was 16, when my parents decided it was time for my two siblings and me to see it. Before then, it had been a sort of mythological place in my mind. My grandparents would tell us tales of our homeland, and I’d feel a knot form in my chest, longing for the roots that I only knew were real by the unmistakable homesickness in their voices. My grandfather would sit at the head of the table—always peeling fruit—and tell my siblings and me of his time as a boy scout in Gaza, teaching us all their chants. Though he would be smiling in reminiscence, a telltale mist would brim in his eyes each time he spoke of the home he lost. The mourning for Palestine persists year after year, each period less hopeful than the last.    

All four of my grandparents were born in Palestine. They were among the 750,000 Palestinians—roughly half of the population—who were expelled from the country in 1948. This was during Al-Nakba, literally translating to “the catastrophe,” when European Jews colonized the land by force at the behest of the British after World War II. Their armed forces destroyed at least 500 Palestinian villages, and then gave the rest Hebrew names, virtually erasing the country’s geographical history. Israel declared itself over the unceded lands. Most Palestinians, including my grandparents, left their homes with the plan to come back when the massacre was over. They packed for a temporary trip and kept their house keys with them. Many of the older generations have held on to those keys, which have become a symbol for the Palestinian right to return where their families lived. But the first Israeli government implemented a series of land laws that prevented any Palestinians who left during this period from ever returning. The Nakba is what rendered us “stateless,” and the resulting trauma is still very much alive for Palestinians 73 years later.

For the Palestinians who managed to stay behind, the discrimination and violence they face from the Israeli state have become part of their daily lives. Israeli authorities have razed the homes of Palestinians in East Jerusalem in order for settlers to move in. Those living in Gaza have been subjected to multiple blockades and restrictions on movement. During the pandemic, while the world applauded Israel’s vaccine effort, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza were not offered vaccines for months. Israel’s actions have been so unjust that the watchdog Human Rights Watch, along with other organizations, has labeled Israel’s current legal system as perpetuating apartheid.

In response to the steadily mounting human rights concerns, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign was born in 2005, pushing the international community to sanction and end their support for Israel. The BDS movement urges individuals to boycott Israeli goods and withdraw investments from the state. 

At McGill, students have been active in the fight against the human rights atrocities perpetrated by Israel for years. Students for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), a McGill club, educates people about the Israeli occupation and advocates for Palestinian liberation. One of SPHR’s central objectives has been to push the McGill administration to divest from Israeli companies. The club released a petition in May 2021 in response to the 11 straight days of brutal atrocities carried out by Israel, including airstrikes in Gaza that left at least 60 Palestinian children dead. It was the deadliest escalation since the 2014 seven-week war on Gaza, which killed around 500 Palestinian children in one summer.

Despite the fact that these actions are clearly wrong, the situation is consistently referred to as a “complicated conflict.” Murder, land-theft, and apartheid are words quietly avoided by Western media. Instead, they deploy muddling adjectives like “complex” and “nuanced.” But one does not need a master’s degree in political science to recognize injustice. 

Harassment, Blacklists, and Doxxing

When McGill students have attempted to protest Israel’s human rights violations, the pushback has been severe. People, particularly Palestinian students, have been doxxed, harassed, and bullied. Those involved with SPHR are familiar with these methods of harassment. Farah*, a Palestinian student who has been involved in SPHR for three years, explained that they have been frequently targeted for their activism on campus.

“I’ve been harassed and followed around on campus,” Farah told //The McGill Tribune//. “I’ve been filmed without giving my consent. I’ve also been followed by McGill security guards that were sent by the administration while we were protesting a couple of years ago.”

Farah recalled a time when, while tabling for SPHR at an activities night, she was non-consensually filmed by several students.        

“Imagine just being on campus minding your own business, trying to talk about your struggle for liberation, and some random students feel that they have the right to literally follow you around and film you and post it on social media because they know that they are going to face zero consequences from the administration,” Farah said.

These instances of harassment and surveillance generate an atmosphere of fear on campus for Palestinian students. Not only are they at the risk of discrimination and surveillance, but they are also in danger of being falsely labelled as anti-Semitic. Students who call out the human rights abuses perpetuated by the Israeli government are often put on blacklists like the Canary Mission, which document supposedly “anti-Semitic” student activists and professors.

“We can see doxxing websites like the Canary Mission where students, professors, and staff are put into these lists and smear campaigns are launched against them,” Farah said. “They take things out of context, they take screenshots of things people have said, and post them with the intention of ruining these peoples’ academic careers or actual careers.”

The Canary Mission also lists organizations such as SPHR, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), BDS, and the newspaper Al Jazeera. It lists Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), an organization on campus comprised of Jewish people who stand in solidarity with Palestine against Zionism. IJV’s former membership and fundraising coordinator Geneviève Joëlle, 3L Law, talked about the experience of being posted on these public blacklists.

“Being on Canary Mission and that being the first thing that comes up when people Google your name—I’ve been experiencing that for the past four years,” Joëlle said. “It is very stressful. The university needs to be taking this seriously, and the fact that they haven’t is very distressing.”

These websites demonize students advocating for the liberation of Palestine by conflating anti-Semitism—an insidious form of discrimination against Jewish people and Judaism—with anti-Zionism, which is an entirely different position. Zionism is the desire for a Jewish nation-state or homeland only for the Jewish people—a movement that is now closely coupled with support for Israel, and thus the oppression of the Palestinian people. It is a settler-colonial movement that supports an apartheid state where European Jews have more rights than the land’s native inhabitants. To equate opposition to the systematic killing, dispossession, and occupation of the Palestinian people with anti-Semitism is either intellectually lazy or manipulative—and in both cases, profoundly wrong.

Currently, Zionism is not regarded as a legitimate form of racial discrimination according to McGill’s “decolonization” and EDI initiatives. As a result, when McGill students are met with this kind of racist hassling on campus, they cannot seek institutional support from equity channels. Their attackers can act with impunity. 

The 11-day war 

Things came to a head last year when the 11-day war erupted. Israel attemped to forcibly evict eight Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, in violation of international law. When Palestinians in Jerusalem protested against the eviction, Israeli Defence Forces proceeded to bomb, raid, and maim Palestinian worshippers in the Al-Aqsa mosque, during the holy month of Ramadan. Meanwhile, Israel launched a military attack on residential buildings in the besieged Gaza strip, where there was no evidence of military targets in the vicinity. The Israeli air strikes killed at least 200 Palestinians in the first week alone—more than one quarter of whom were children.

During Israel’s attacks last year, SPHR wrote an open letter calling on McGill to recognize Zionism as a form of racism and divest from corporations that participate in the expansion of illegal settlements in occupied Palestine. Unfortunately, their request was swiftly dismissed by the administration. Instead, Provost and Vice-Principal (Academic) Christopher Manfredi sent out an email to students and staff that condemned Palestinian students for speaking out at all.

“[It was] genuinely one of the most offensive [things] I’ve ever read,” Farah said.

The Provost referred to the atrocities that had occurred as “unrest in the Middle East,” not even bothering to use the words Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. By choosing not to specify any of these places, the Provost is contributing to the colonial erasure of Palestine.

“The raiding of Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the bombing of Gaza, all of that stuff was called ‘violence in the Middle East,’” Farah explained. “So imagine being a Palestinian, receiving this email while your people are literally dying, and the administration doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of your struggle.”

Instead, the Provost called this activism a “misuse of our EDI-based plans and policies.” What are the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) policies for if not for students to call out discrimination and injustice on campus? Nothing could have been more insulting to Palestinian students on campus, who were already burdened with mourning their people and trying to attend classes while their family’s homes were being bombed.

Perhaps the most harmful element of the entire email was when the Provost carelessly wrote that the unrest impacted “Palestinian and Jewish members of the campus community.” Not only did he dangerously conflate Zionism with Judaism, but he implied that all Jewish students were in support of the Israeli state, and thus the violent oppression of the Palestinians. Joëlle explained not all Jewish students share those views. 

“This is an attempt to paint Jewish people as a monolith, and in the process undermines efforts being done [by anti-Zionist Jews] to further Palestinian rights,” Joëlle said.

In some ways, McGill’s inaction comes as no surprise, considering their reaction to activism against South African apartheid. In the 1980s, Black and African students urged McGill to divest from South Africa, but it took several years and significant student pressure for it to happen. The campaign was primarily led by a club called the McGill South Africa Committee, which, like SPHR, advocated for divestment through workshops, informational sessions, and protests. They also had their very own Anti-Apartheid Week. //The McGill Daily// published an editorial called “South Africa: Love it and leave it” in 1985, at which time student organizations had been calling on the administration to divest for years. Though the administration finally divested in 1986 after a four-hour protest involving 1,200 McGill students, total divestment took several years. It seems the administration needs years of pressure to be on the right side of history.

Blacklists on Campus

In May of 2021, an anonymous student tipped off The McGill Tribune that there was an alleged blacklist of pro-Palestine students circulating on campus. In the same month, according to SPHR, several sources told the student organization that the list may have existed for decades, with the alleged objective to surveil and document pro-Palestine students at McGill. According to SPHR’s sources, some student politicians have used the list to mobilize against “Anti-Israel” candidates running for Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) positions. In a statement regarding the list, SPHR claimed that when a student raised the issue of the blacklist with the dean of students, he dismissed it due to lack of evidence. Shortly thereafter, however, the student began to receive text messages from random strangers asking about their sexual activity. Harassers posted their name and personal phone number to a website that stated they were offering sexual services, and depicted them as an anti-Semite. 

“When our university is not even trying to pretend that they believe that this blacklist exists, that Palestinian students on campus feel unsafe, then when someone decides to be an activist on campus, they are putting themselves at future risk,” Farah said.

Bryan Buraga, former president of SSMU, expressed his disappointment that further investigation into these claims about a blacklist never materialized. 

“In my opinion, if someone is incredibly accused of aiding and abetting violence against certain individuals on campus, in this case pro-Palestinian activists, that should demand a full investigation and suspension,” Buraga said.

SSMU’s history of disapproving policies in favour of Palestinian human rights reinforces this theory. The BoD has also refused to ratify a joint SSMU-SPHR statement acknowledging the Palestinian Nakba, despite its endorsement by SSMU’s Legislative Council. The Board’s decision was made during a confidential session. 

“[The conflicts of interest involved] just tell me that they fundamentally don’t care about the safety concerns of students, at least when it comes to pro-Palestinian activists,” Buraga said. 

Our university often chooses to recognize political injustices only in retrospect. Why should the administration wait to issue a useless apology in 50 years, when it has finally deemed my people’s suffering worthy of its acknowledgement? Here’s a revolutionary thought: McGill should make substantive changes in the present tense. It can begin to do so by answering SPHR’s demands. It must not just acknowledge that Palestine exists, but also that its people are being subjected to a racist apartheid. It must not just call Zionism what it is—a settler-colonial movement—but also divest from the institutions that fund and profit from it. It must not just investigate the blacklist that threatens students and faculty on campus, but penalize those involved. Claiming to foster a “safe” campus for racialized students is not enough; McGill must take action to fulfill this commitment. 

Editorial, Opinion

A curfew cannot get us through the pandemic

by The McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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Many living in Quebec experienced a sense of déjà vu when premier François Legault announced that his administration would once again impose a curfew in response to a shocking rise in cases of COVID-19. Put into effect Dec. 31, the move came just under one year after the province’s first curfew—which lasted for just over five months—which was put into place Jan. 9, 2021. Sharp criticism of the policy has been persistent and widespread since the announcement, with many questioning its effectiveness. While it remains crucial that Quebec residents band together to curb the spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, the curfew amounts to little more than political theatre that risks severely harming society’s most vulnerable. 

There is no doubt that the rise in COVID-19 cases, along with associated hospitalizations and deaths, is serious. On Jan. 1, the province reported an all-time record of 17,122 new cases at a 31 per cent positivity rate. It is as important as ever to get vaccinated, wear proper masks, and minimize close contacts. However, a curfew is not the solution. 

Being trapped in one’s home from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. is undoubtedly difficult for the majority of the population. Nearly two full years into the pandemic, many have given their all to do their part to prevent contracting the virus and infecting others. To be back in what feels like the same dark place as a year ago, even with huge swaths of the population vaccinated, can spur feelings of hopelessness amongst even the most privileged. Such a policy also serves to worsen the mental health crisis brought on by isolation. 

That said, the curfew does not impact the population equally. Consider unhoused communities—last year, no exception was made for those living on the streets until courts decided otherwise almost three weeks in. Even with the exception, the situation remains critical: A lack of beds in shelters compounded by outbreaks among clients and staff is ravaging the shelter system in Montreal. The absence of support for unhoused people is iniquitous, especially when this group is more likely to contract and die from COVID-19 for a myriad of reasons out of their control. The curfew also allows for increased police surveillance and overreach, almost certainly impacting racialized and migrant communities at a disproportionate rate. Even one’s modes of transportation add a layer of privilege: Those with access to cars are generally less likely to be stopped than those travelling by foot or public transit. 

What makes this current situation so egregious is that it could have been avoided. A proactive approach could have very likely lessened the blow of the current wave. The rollout of booster shots, for example, was far too slow compared to other countries with similar resources. Provinces across the country also dragged their feet on the distribution of rapid tests to the general population, despite the fact that the federal government began shipping them out well over a year ago. Even now, access to kits remains scarce and guidance on how to use them is confusing. And as cases and hospitalizations rise, the government has chosen to further restrict access to “gold standard” PCR tests and shorten the isolation period for those who test positive. Exhausted Quebecers have been left to deal with the consequences of the government’s poor crisis management with jarringly little support. 

All the while, there remains no scientific proof that a curfew does anything in its own right to lessen transmission. This kind of restriction risks leading to a decrease of public trust in government, and science by extension—making it all the more difficult to get out of this pandemic. 

The curfew and its consequences are symptoms of longstanding systemic problems, and it is easy to feel powerless as governments fail to keep their populations safe. While the onus is ultimately on those in power to do what is right, students and others with time and resources can take actionable steps like volunteering to help with the vaccination campaign and within the shelter system, and responding to calls for mutual aid. The only way to make it through the pandemic is together. 

Off the Board, Opinion

Learning to stay afloat while browsing

by Wendy Zhao on

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I, like many university students, grew up on the internet. Between the tabs and usernames, I slowly built a self. As a slightly awkward high schooler, I found camaraderie in online spaces run by other teenagers, and learned the fundamentals on topics like sex and menstruation by scouring the many corners of YouTube. In elementary school, I sustained a friendship over weekly Skype calls, and later, I hesitantly organized my first date through an app. 

I used to relish having pieces of my past self preserved forever in the digital ether. As I have grown, however, I often wonder whether I have given too much of myself to the web, been molded to conform too intimately to its addictive designs. Depictions of the internet in the media have no doubt shaped how I see my own agency online. The Internet Novel, a recently emerged genre within popular media concerned with dramatizing our digital lives, often represents the internet as a force of corruption. Social media films of the past few years like Mainstream (2020) or The Social Dilemma (2020) depict society’s self-destruction in a vapid arena of likes and comments. Attention spans are fleeting, anger ineffectual, or so the story goes. The screen’s sheen has turned slimy: Users are perpetually distracted, scrolling into their own abyss. A “digital detox” frequently sounds promising, a key to some spiritual rejuvenation. 

Though I may romanticize an unplugged society, the virtual world is here to stay. Trying to purge myself of digital attachment has never been productive: When my weekly screen time report tells me that I’ve reduced my phone usage, the morsel of pride that creeps in—some illusion of management or healing—only sustains my unhealthy habits. Instead, when I find myself falling into a tedium of passive scrolling and watching, I try to remember that, contrary to monolithic media depictions, I’m not just a mindless idiot hypnotized by the algorithm. There are ways of using technology without existing within its predatory designs. 

Instagram user @sighswoon, for instance, tells her followers to not feel guilty when they’re having a good time online. In her guide to having a positive experience on the app, she advises that feeling joy may just mean that you’re finally using it correctly. Gabi Abrão, the artist behind the page, advocates for people to use social media with intention. Abrão first started the “digital resting point,” a genre of Instagram stories that includes peaceful nature scenes—a trickling waterfall, gentle waves, a spiralling flock of birds—accompanied with the text along the lines of “congratulations!” and “stay as long as you’d like.” Coming across one of these posts makes me feel like a character in a video game suddenly surfacing into reality, pressing pause on the preceding action. When the momentum of social media becomes laborious, I log off. 

In defiance of the discriminatory violence of algorithms and data collection emerges “data healing.” Jumpstarted by curator Neema Githere, the term refers to the practice of reorienting our relationship to technology in alignment with spirituality and nature. The project’s web page yields resources that explain the hostile tactics of our digital interfaces, rituals for dealing with stressful encounters on social media, and interactive technologies designed with marginalized communities in mind.  

In 2017, Netflix’s CEO named its biggest competitor sleep. Within the capitalist architecture of Big Tech, these holistic digital practices then reflect a collective will to care for each other’s well-being. In spite of the superficial imitations of human connection promoted by likes and threads, internet communities can still help foster the real thing. 

Especially during times of isolation, I have learned to not be too hard on myself when attempting to reorient my relationship with technology. Like our physical world, nothing in the virtual realm exists on a polar good-evil binary. Though cyberspace is often described as an attention economy, I have come to the realization that my attention is not just a commodity to be exploited, but that I can redirect my energy to deeper forms of connection and care.  

McGill, News

Contract negotiations between McGill and MUNACA at impasse

by Leo Larman Brown on

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Negotiations between McGill University’s Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA)—a union that represents nearly 2,000 support staff employees—and the university’s administration have reached a standstill after McGill’s most recent contract offer left MUNACA representatives unsatisfied. The contract between the two has not been updated since it expired late November 2018.

In an interview with The McGill Tribune, Thomas Chalmers, president of MUNACA, explained that McGill’s salary offer, which is “close to being final” is unfair for MUNACA members. 

“According to their latest offer, [McGill said] there is not much room to move,” Chalmers said. “They offered a 1.5 per cent increase for three years over each year, which is well below the cost of living [….] The cost of living [would be a] 3.5 per cent [increase]. I think that’s a huge difference.”

Nancy Crowe, MUNACA vice-president (VP) Labour Relations, added that the low salary offer causes an imbalance in the negotiations, favouring McGill.

“The expectation […] is that we move toward them [in our offer], not the other way around,” Crowe said. “[It is] clear that discussion stops if [we] don’t reduce our demands.” 

McGill media relations officer Frédérique Mazerolle provided a statement about the impasse on McGill’s behalf, which reads that both parties have met extensively to create a new contract. 

“Following the MUNACA union drive which resulted in a new MUNACA bargaining unit, parties have met regularly with the aim to conclude a first collective agreement (i.e. under the new bargaining unit),” Mazerolle wrote in an email to the Tribune. “While details cannot be shared at this time given the ongoing negotiations with MUNACA union leadership, discussions will continue in January in presence of a conciliator appointed by the Ministry of Labour pursuant to a request filed by McGill.”

Chalmers expressed uncertainty that the conciliation will help overcome the dispute between the two parties.

“Hopefully the conciliator will be able to bring the parties together, but there is a significant difference [in what the two want],” Chalmers said. “We’re not talking about a strike yet, there are other things we can do in terms of pressure tactics [….] Nobody wants a strike […] but also nobody is ready to be treated like shit.”

With MUNACA members forced to do in-person work during the COVID-19 Omicron variant surge, Crowe feels that issues between the McGill administration and its employees have been exacerbated.

“We now have people working in a library, not in the back of Service Point, where there is no one to serve,” Crowe said. “We have admin staff in a wellness centre for which students have no access [….] We’re dealing right now with [McGill’s] disregard for the health and safety of our members during this rapid spread of Omicron.”

Fanta Ly is the president of the Association of McGill University Support Employees (AMUSE), a union representing approximately 1,500 employees, most of whom are students. She is disappointed with how McGill is treating its employees, particularly the floor fellows who live in student residences, amidst the Omicron wave.

“[McGill] had issued contracts for floor fellows even when they knew the semester was going to be online and then withdrew those contracts,” Ly said. “Some of [the floor fellows] had already relocated to Montreal, and [McGill] did that very last minute.” 

Representatives from MUNACA and AMUSE both cited Workday, an HR software McGill implemented in August 2020, as an ineffective platform for payroll. 

“It was such a mess when it was implemented that thousands of people weren’t paid for a substantial amount of time,” Crowe said.

Reflecting on the negotiations and the struggles that employees and unions are facing, Crowe spotlighted the essential role employees play in ensuring McGill’s smooth functioning. 

“I would frame this […] as a typical worker’s struggle,” Crowe said. “We are support staff, we make this university run, we’re on campus, our members are working [….] McGill works because we do.”

Sports

Business and pleasure: The intertwined world of sports management

by Sophia Gorbounov on

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Despite what grandpa might say at the dinner table, professional sports have been and continue to be a business, with management roles that span from athlete representation to brand marketing. Founded in 2018, the McGill Sports Management Club (MSMC) aims to bridge the gap between business skills learned in the classroom and those found in the world of athletics. 

Sports management, as the name suggests, deals with the business aspects of sports and recreation, professional or not. Thomas Atchison, U2 Management, serves as the MSMC’s senior director of speaker relations. In an interview with The McGill Tribune, he spoke to the wide range of positions possible within the sports management industry. 

“A lot of people think of sports management as being the general manager of a team, but it’s much broader than that,” Atchison said. “It relates to anything where you have to manage the resources, the people [….] it can be marketing, it can be many different channels.”

Indeed, sports management encompasses countless professions, including analysts, agents, lawyers, and specialists in marketing, health, and athletic development.

MSMC co-president Wyatt Gilbert, U3 Management, further emphasized that those who pursue careers in sports management do not need the impressive abilities of the athletes they manage. 

“The word ‘sport’ [in sports management] does not necessarily imply that those entrusted with manager roles have the same athletic ability,” Gilbert said. “Managers in accounting firms or marketing firms can be just as effective in a sports management position.”

Since McGill lacks a sports management program or specialization, the MSMC team hopes to provide their peers with a comprehensive introduction to the sports business world. The club acts as a touchpoint for students looking to penetrate the field. 

“As a club, we do not take a general membership fee,” Gilbert said. “Other clubs will take a fee and provide services only for students who paid that fee, which is a bit exclusive.”

In contrast to other Management Undergraduate Society (MUS) groups that require a membership fee, the MSMC’s funding is event-based: Students from all faculties pay to attend events of their choosing. All events focus on educating attendees on how to grow one’s network of professionals in their specific field of interest.

Last year, the MSMC started a mentorship program that pairs applicants one-on-one with a host of industry professionals, including Trevor Timmins, former assistant general manager of the Montreal Canadiens.

“It isn’t just that you sign up and get paired randomly, there is a little method to the madness,” Gilbert said. “It’s about connecting people with [professionals with] aligned interests and aligned goals […] to tangibly help a student wanting to break into their industry of interest.”

Additionally, the program aims to provide a wide range of options for students to choose from, including athlete representation and analytics. 

“We are trying [to diversify] as much as we can,” Atchison said. “We try to have someone from every field, so anyone interested in sports management in general can work with someone in their preferred field.”

Both Atchison and Gilbert know and understand the daunting nature of management, which is typically characterized by stern, go-getting businesspeople defined by their net worth. Though Gilbert emphasized that the MSMC and the professionals they work with all started off in university, it is important to recognize that one’s background and opportunities can impact one’s network starting out. Atchison further explained that a passion for the sports management industry and an equal dedication to improving your skills are what matters most. 

“Regardless of your network, [when you enter a field] they’re going to look at your skills either way,” Atchison said. “So, if something interests you, start with the simple stuff. You don’t need to go to the biggest person you see, you can start small. The main priority should be to hone your skills.”

Sports management is a unique and developing field, where the tasks lie less in trying to beat out the competition and more in seizing your passions. The MSMC holds the door to the athletic industry wide open for any McGillian interested in stepping in.

Science & Technology

Tribune Explains: The Omicron variant

by Maiuri Maheswaran on

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Over the past few weeks, there has been a surge of coronavirus cases around the world. As of Dec. 21, it was estimated that the new Omicron variant accounted for more than 80 per cent of total cases in Montreal. The variant was first detected in South Africa on Nov. 24, and on Nov. 26, it was designated as a variant of concern by the World Health Organization (WHO). 

What are the symptoms of Omicron?

Common symptoms include body and muscle aches, headaches, sore throat, runny nose, fever, and fatigue. These symptoms are similar to those of the common cold for some people. Like previous variants, symptoms such as fever and nasal congestion are common, but the loss of taste and smell are less prevalent among Omicron patients than they are among the older variants. In most cases, especially if a patient has no underlying health conditions, the symptoms are milder than previous variants, making it hard to track cases as infected people are more likely to either ignore the symptoms or assume it is the common cold. However, there has still been a concerning rise in hospitalizations in Canada since Omicron took off, with the unvaccinated making up the majority of intensive care unit admissions.

What are the mutations present in the Omicron variant?

Compared to the original SARS-CoV2-strain, the Omicron variant has 50 additional mutations. Thirty-two of these mutations are found on the virus’s spike proteins. The spike proteins allow the virus to enter the body and spread. Fifteen of these mutations are found in the receptor binding domain of the spike protein. These mutations make it easier for the virus to bind to the ACE2 receptors, infect cells and replicate—making it a faster spreading variant. A study conducted by researchers in Hong Kong corroborated this finding, showing that the Omicron variant replicated 70 times more quickly in the upper airways compared to the Delta variant. However, additional studies show that Omicron fails to replicate in the lungs because it cannot interact with TMPRSS2—a protein found on the surface of the lungs. This is good because infection of the lungs leads to more severe disease. 

Dr. Brian Ward is a professor in McGill’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences whose research involves monitoring the evolution and development of vaccines. 

“Most of us working in the field believe that massive exposure due to the Omicron variant will trigger the transition from ‘pandemic’ to ‘endemic’ phases of the outbreak.” Ward wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. 

A Danish study recently showed that people who received the booster shot were 56 per cent less likely to be infected than those who received two doses.  

How effective are vaccines against micron? Will routine boosters be necessary?

“Pandemic viruses tend to evolve to lower virulence, bad when they first appear and then progressive declines in virulence,” Ward wrote. “In some cases, this is driven by adaptation of the virus to a population with high levels of immunity.”

It is important to note that vaccines protect the body against viruses by making the body produce not only antibodies, but T-cells that recognize the virus. When a COVID-19 vaccine is administered, the antibodies and T-cells recognize the spike protein and will bind to the spike protein and “neutralize” the virus. 

Compared to the antibodies, T-cells are slower to form. However, they offer longer-lasting protection and prevent severe infection. 

The mutations in the Omicron spike protein allow it to evade the antibodies generated from the vaccine but not the T-cells. This means that the antibodies are no longer able to recognize and bind to the spike proteins of new variants. However, the more antibodies you have, the greater the chance the antibodies will recognize the virus. The antibodies from people who received the booster were 25 times more likely to bind to the virus than those that did not receive the booster. 

One question of particular concern is whether boosters would need to be administered yearly. Jorg Fritz, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, speculates that this may become the case.
“Given the current high viral circulation rate and low vaccination rate overall worldwide it is very likely that we will need an annual booster shot for the years ahead,” Fritz wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “The booster shots might need ‘adaptation’ to include antigenicity of novel circulating viruses (e.g. Omicron, or newly arising variants that might appear and transmit highly).”

(NASA)
Science & Technology

A selection of 2021’s top advances in science

by Cyril Kazan on

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Content Warning: Mention of traumatic injury.

In 2021, despite the pandemic continuing to wreak havoc on society, scientists continued to break boundaries in diverse fields of research. The McGill Tribune highlights four remarkable advances that occurred over the past year, while we were busy wondering whether the pandemic will ever come to an end. 

World’s first double arm and shoulder transplant 

On Jan. 13, an Icelandic man named Felix Gretarsson underwent the world’s first double arm and shoulder transplant. The 15-hour surgery took place in Lyon, France and involved medical teams from four different hospitals. In 1998, Gretarsson, 48, was working as an electrician when he mistakenly grabbed a 11,000-volt live line which projected him nine metres down onto ice, leaving him with a broken neck and shoulder, and setting both his arms on fire. More than 20 years after the accident, Gretarsson had the opportunity to undergo this high-risk, first-of-its-kind surgery. Fortunately, it was a success. Based on the approximation that nerves grow one millimetre per day on average, the doctors expected him, in the best-case scenario, to be able to move his elbows after one year, and his hands after two years. But Gretarsson is making incredible progress and has already surpassed the doctors’ predictions. According to his last update on Instagram, just nine months after the surgery, he was already able to move his right forearm and fingers. 

A helicopter on Mars

On Feb. 18, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars. Its mission: To look for signs of ancient microbial life and to search for evidence of past habitability on the red planet. What’s even more special about it, however, is that the rover transported in its belly another vehicle: Ingenuity. Ingenuity is a helicopter capable of flying in Mars’s thin atmosphere that has a density of about 1.2-1.5 per cent of Earth’s atmosphere at sea level. It weighs only four pounds and has carbon-fibre blades that can spin at up to 2,400 rpm, significantly faster than a helicopter on Earth that typically spins at 225 to 550 rpm. Ingenuity was designed to fly for up to 90 seconds per flight, to distances of about 300 metres and heights of up to 4.5 metres off the ground. Its first Mars flight on Apr. 19 was a success, and so were the 17 ones thereafter. It is indeed mind-blowing to think that little more than a century after the Wright Brothers’ first flight here on Earth, humans are now flying a helicopter on a planet hundreds of millions of kilometres away. 

Human-monkey hybrid embryo 

A team of American and Chinese scientists managed to create human-monkey hybrid embryos for the very first time. They did so by injecting monkey embryos with human stem cells, which successfully grew into hybrid embryos. Human-animal hybrid embryos, also known as chimera, are a useful technology that can potentially be used to grow human organs for transplant. It is important to understand that developed embryos would not lead to half-human, half-animal creatures, but rather to animals with human cells in some parts of their body—for instance, in a specific organ of interest. Before the creation of the first human-monkey embryo, other human-animal hybrids such as human-cow and human-pig embryos already existed. For instance, scientists in Japan are using human-pig embryos to grow pigs with human organs that can be transplanted into a patient. The research team that created the human-monkey embryos did not intend to implant them into a monkey uterus and it is highly unlikely that these embryos will ever be used directly for organ production. However, observing crosstalk between human and monkey cells in the embryo, two very closely related species, could provide valuable information to improve the ability to fine-tune human cell migration in other human-animal hybrid embryos. 

Oldest sequenced genome to date

Before 2021, the oldest DNA to have been sequenced was that of a horse bone from the Yukon Territory in Canada. Its estimated age lies somewhere between 560,000 and 780,000 years old. In 2021, evolutionary geneticist Love Dalén of the Swedish Museum of Natural History broke a record by sequencing a genome estimated to be 1.65 million years old. The sample came from mammoth teeth excavated in Siberia in the 1970s by Russian paleontologist Andrei Sher. The permafrost-preserved teeth had severely damaged and fragmented DNA, but thanks to advances in DNA sequencing technologies and bioinformatics, the DNA fragments were successfully sequenced and reordered. The sequence information indicated that the teeth belonged to a mammoth from an entirely new and previously undiscovered lineage.

Arts & Entertainment, Books, Film and TV

What we liked this winter break

by Isy Stevens, Courtney Squires, Louis Lussier-Piette, Arian Kamel on

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The return to class, whether online or in person, following the holiday season is a frustrating yet familiar struggle for McGill students. As per tradition, the Arts and Entertainment team used their time off to take in lots of exciting TV, movies, and books. Here’s the best of what we liked this winter break.

My Body by Emily Ratajkowski – Isy Stevens

My Body a memoir by Emily Ratajkowski, describes the model’s rise to fame in the male-dominated, and often toxic, fashion industry. Through a series of essays, Ratajkowski explores topics that include the internalization of the male gaze, the power of externalized sexuality, and the dark side of the “momager” phenomenon. Ratajkowski’s writings reveal a surprising shrewdness and vulnerability, subverting assumptions that social media personas like herself are vapid and one-dimensional. Although much of the memoir’s content will resonate deeply with readers, Ratajkowski did miss a major opportunity to examine her own role in perpetuating the harmful beauty standards she condemns. Nevertheless, My Body is an insightful read that should provoke important discussions among us all. 

A Discovery of Witches by Rebecca Harkness – Courtney Squires 

Rebecca Harkness crafts an adult, dark-academia version of the fantasy novels that shaped our generation’s childhoods, weaving romance, magic, and scatterings of historical alchemy together in the first novel of the All Souls trilogy. Set in the delightfully dreary university town of Oxford, A Discovery of Witches follows Diana Bishop, a magic-avoidant witch who discovers a long lost book and, of course, a vampire. Despite a somewhat predictable plot, Harkness carefully cultivates an aesthetic that will reignite any fantasy-lover’s past aches at not receiving a Hogwarts letter. An accompaniment to my annual holiday Harry Potter marathon, the popularity of A Discovery of Witches is an example of how magical fiction can mature alongside its readers, with new books emerging to replace ones we’ve outgrown. As we enter our third year of the pandemic, A Discovery of Witches provides a bout of much-needed escapism. 

Succession Season 3 – Louis Lussier-Piette

From its synopsis only, Succession gives the impression of a bland show specifically designed for Desautels students, but it is able to to transcend clichés in the most surprising ways. Described by some as the corporate Game of Thrones, Succession centres one dysfunctional family of Wall Street billionaires dealing with issues ranging from tax fraud controversies to third-degree murder. Showrunner Jesse Armstrong constructs characters complex and relatable enough that the audience can’t help but root for them despite their questionable moral standing. After ending its second season on a cliffhanger two years ago, Succession came back for a third season and delivers narrative twists more akin to a Greek tragedy than a TV series, acclaimed by both critics and fans. With its genius writing, impeccable cinematography, and hair-raising soundtrack, Succession checks all the marks, making it one of the best shows on TV right now. 

Licorice Pizza – Arian Kamel

While the rest of the world was recoiling from the Vietnam War and Watergate in the 1970s, the San Fernando Valley felt like its own little world. Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest triumph, Licorice Pizza, follows the lovesick Alana (Alana Haim) and Gary (Cooper Hoffman) as they explore the valley. Contrary to expectations, it is exactly these first-time actors’ inexperience that makes their performances a joy to watch, as their raw acting blurs the boundary between actor and character. Alana and Gary test out different callings, while a wide array of eccentric figures enter their lives like Sean Pean’s charismatic Hollywood star or Bradley Cooper’s batshit crazy hairdresser. Each job or situation seems so full of potential, yet ends up subverted and befuddled. Nonetheless, Alana and Gary continue and try something new again, hoping to finally find their place in the valley and in the world. It’s a shock when the film ends, since it felt so real and so warm that I’d hoped it never would.

Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

‘Anxious People’ is underwhelming as a TV series

by Suzanna Graham on

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Content warning: Mentions of suicide, drug addiction, and violence

Being a bank robber isn’t easy. From attempting to rob a cashless bank, to accidentally taking eight lovable yet bizarre people hostage at an open house, Anxious People’s anti-hero has found himself in a no-win situation. However, as police storm the building to rescue the frazzled hostages, the bank robber is nowhere to be found. It is this central question that plagues the police throughout the six episodes: Where did he go? 

Based on Fredrik Backman’s 2020 novel, Anxious People follows local police father-and-son duo Jim (Dan Ekborg) and Jack (Alfred Svensson) as they attempt to make sense of this seemingly nonsensical hostage crisis. While the book focusses on the characters who were taken hostage, the Swedish-language limited series spends more time on the police investigation, for which the cops are wildly unequipped. Their incompetence adds humour to the narrative, such as when Jack runs out during a haircut with a trailing hairstylist and Jim steals several pizzas from a local pizzeria to hand-deliver a meal to the armed bank robber—one of his bizarre requests.

The informal and unorganized nature of the duo balances with the heavier themes of trauma and redemption within the show. At its core, Anxious People is a story about getting second chances and coping with life’s messiness. After failing to prevent a man’s suicide when he was 12, Jack strives to help those in need and prove his competency as a police officer, despite living in his father’s shadow. On the other hand, Jim is more concerned with helping his daughter—who struggles with addiction—than working on the case. As Jim sees it, nothing got stolen and nobody got hurt (except for a hostage’s bloody nose and Jack being hit in the eye with a lime); therefore, there is no need to search for the missing robber. 

Unfortunately, while Jim and Jack are compelling characters, their prevalence in the six episode series limits any exploration of the eight complex characters who Backman created in the novel. For example, married couple Anna-Lena (Marika Lagercrantz) and Roger (Leif Andrée) have little in common besides their joint hobby of flipping apartments. After Anna-Lena undermines her husband by hiring Lennart (Per Andersson) to creatively lower the asking price, Roger struggles to trust his wife. Yet the real communication issue is between the show and audience, as real—and fictional—relationships are not magically fixed in a single afternoon, especially with limited verbal interactions between husband and wife. Similarly, the series neglects to show the novel’s most compelling love story, the one of Lennart and Zarah (Anna Granath). As a straight-laced wealthy lawyer, Zarah is wildly different from Lennart, who is paid to create chaos. While in the novel the two kindle a delightful slow-burn romance, the series expects its audience to root for the couple without revealing their original chemistry. 

These rushed storylines are almost insulting to the characters that Backman creates in his novel, whose actions and motives are well explained—not to mention highly entertaining, even without the television visuals. Although the actors make the best out of a questionable situation with top-notch physical comedy, it’s hard to achieve a full emotional range while being constricted by a weak script and rushed pace.

By neglecting to round out these eight pivotal characters, the series turns hollow, relying on two cop characters who Backman created to be about as complex as the average sidekick. As a show, the narrative loses its focus, resulting in an underwhelming story that fails to reach its potential. 

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