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Hockey, Sports

NHL quarter-season awards

by Mitch Bannon, Sebastian Pazdan, Owen Gibbs on

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Hart Trophy: Connor McDavid

In 2013, Habs forward Lars Eller raised some eyebrows when he compared the Edmonton Oilers to a junior team. The only reason that his comment doesn’t still ring true, five seasons later, is the play from the man they call ‘McJesus’: Connor McDavid. McDavid, on pace for 118 points, has single-handedly willed a terrible Oilers team within four points of the last wildcard spot as of Nov. 26. McDavid deserves the de-facto most valuable player award for his ability to grant his AHL-calibre teammates with cushy NHL contracts and because he has hoodwinked the NHL into thinking that the Oilers are not that bad.

Norris Trophy: Mark Giordano

With the Pacific Division up for grabs, Flames captain Mark Giordano is in line to win his first Norris, awarded to the best all-round defenceman. Playing nearly 24.5 minutes a night, Giordano’s elite playmaking ability has him on pace for 75 points, and the Flames give up half as many passes to high-scoring areas when he is on the ice. Giordano is also on the ice for 6.5 per cent more shots for than shots against, a higher percentage than all other candidates, including Morgan Reilly and Thomas Chabot.

Vezina Award: Pekka Rinne

At 36 years old, Pekka Rinne is proving doubters and aging curves wrong. Rinne has put together another elite campaign in net for the Nashville Predators, and the statistics show it: He has a 10-2-1 record, .942 save percentage, and 1.68 goals against average. With the league’s best defence in front of him, Rinne is in an optimal position to be named the league’s best netminder again. Other Vezina contenders include the Maple Leafs’ Frederik Andersen and the Ducks’ John Gibson, who could continue to put forward compelling cases by season’s end.

Calder Trophy: Elias Pettersson

Despite missing six games after suffering a concussion in October, Elias Pettersson is off to a quick start. With 13 goals and 21 points in his first 20 NHL games for the lowly Vancouver Canucks, the opening to his rookie campaign has been on par with those of Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin. His speed, scoring, and playmaking abilities have compelled Wayne Gretzky to compare Pettersson to, well, himself. The sky appears to be the limit for the 20-year-old, and he should coast to the Calder—provided that he remains healthy throughout the season.

Jack Adams Award: Phil Housley

Shocking many in the hockey world, Phil Housley’s Buffalo Sabres have jumped into playoff contention just a season removed from being the NHL’s worst team. Housley has coached the Sabres to the league’s third-best record as of Nov. 26. He has managed his top line of Jeff Skinner, Jack Eichel, and Jason Pominville as it has developed into one of the most dominant offensive lines in hockey, and the team is well on its way to their first playoff appearance since 2011.

Stanley Cup Champion: Nashville Predators

As of Nov. 26, the Predators lead the league in points, on pace for a remarkable 120. The Predators are a team without weakness: They have a solid forward core, an exceptional goalie tandem of Rinne and Juuse Saros, and one of the best defences in the NHL. Their tremendous depth provides an advantage over other contenders: For instance, after Tampa Bay Lightning starting goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy was injured, the Bolts, otherwise a tough team, saw their record suffer due to weak back-up netminding. Elsewhere, the Winnipeg Jets and San Jose Sharks could be contenders, but both teams have had slow starts relative to preseason expectations. At this rate, the Predators have emerged as the clear-cut favourite to win it all.

Campus Spotlight, Student Life

Hot Cities of the World Tour takes students to far-off destinations

by Gabriela McGuinty on

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Every year, McGill undergraduate students apply for the “Hot Cities of the World Tour,” a 12-day trip to cities around the world spearheaded by Associate Professor in the Faculty of Management Karl Moore. Following the trip’s slogan, “taking the future to the future,” this initiative is an unparalleled opportunity for 30 undergraduates to travel to some of the world’s leading economic hubs alongside one of McGill’s distinguished professors and a dozen McGill alumni.  

“[The idea for the trip] started in 2006,” Moore said. “I took 20 McGill students to spend the day with Warren Buffett in Omaha. On the way back from [a visit with] the second richest person in the world, I thought to myself, ‘how do you follow up?’”

To name a few destinations on past trips, Moore has taken students to India, South Africa, Russia, Mongolia, Doha, and Jakarta. Applications are due in October, and Moore selects 30 McGill students to go on the excursion soon thereafter. This year, the selected undergraduates will visit Tokyo, Bangkok, and Phuket.

Suneil Kheterpal (BCom’17) participated in the 2016 tour and views the experience as instrumental to his understanding of South America. Kheterpal travelled to the region and had the chance not only to observe practical applications of economic theory, but also discover a new culture along the way.

“There’s a series of memorable moments,” Kheterpal said. “We travelled to a vineyard to see the different wines of Chile, [visited] a coffee plantation site in Colombia, met the mayor of Bogotá, [and went] salsa dancing outside the old city of Cartagena”.

In an effort to make travel accessible to students from various socioeconomic backgrounds, Moore tries to select a varied range of students. This year, for the first time in the program’s history, the trip is taking two law students and three indigenous students on scholarships. Two-thirds of the accepted students have received financial aid. According to Moore, this attention to diversity provokes new and necessary conversations throughout the trip.

“We do reflections on the trip where, fairly regularly, we split into groups of four and we discuss what we [got] out of what we just heard,” Moore said. “Everyone adds their own view. Students from other disciplines get all sorts of lessons from it because you’re hearing from different people.”

Each year, Moore selects different destinations based on current events and recent economic developments. For this reason, the recent stops on the trips have primarily been to cities across Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Seoul, and Hong Kong, where regional economies are rapidly growing and becoming hubs for financial and business ventures.

“We’re looking at some of the leading companies in the world, both global[ly] as well as locally, to get a sense of how they do business but also how they lead, how they advertise, and how they do business outside of America,” Moore said.  “But, [the trip] is not there as a holiday. We meet with CEOs, politicians, journalists, [and others].”

The McGill alumni who accompany Moore and his students serve as mentors and points of contact for students. The alumni simultaneously support Moore throughout the trip and facilitate discussions between students and themselves after the interviews they hold with industry experts.  

“The alumni bring maturity, and the students love to talk to [them],” Moore said. “They talk about their careers, where they live, families [….] It’s you in 10 or 15 years, so, it’s thinking about what your life may be like in the next coming years. It’s your chance to explore the life of someone actually doing those thing you’re thinking about.”

The Hot Cities of the World experience offers students a unique alternative to reading week and the opportunity to make connections and learn directly from successful people in the fields that they aspire to work in.

“The one thing you take away is a lifetime of friendships and relationships that you can build off of,” Kheterpal said. “Today, I am in contact with several of the participants that live around the world, [such as] New York, London, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, [and] Toronto. These are close friends of mine that I can rely on for both advice and employment opportunities.”

News, SSMU

SSMU’s great bank switch

by Ezra-Jean Taylor on

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As part of a massive financial overhaul, the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) is currently switching from ScotiaBank to the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). SSMU was one of ScotiaBank’s biggest customers with over 230 accounts.

“We’re one of the only student unions that gives this many clubs this many bank accounts,” SSMU Vice-President (VP) Finance Jun Wang said. “[ScotiaBank and RBC] have never encountered a client with this many sub-accounts.”

The original ScotiaBank contract was drawn up in 1992 and has not been updated since. Wang blames it for creating communication issues, confusion, and red tape for SSMU clubs, which motivated the switch. According to him, a particular difficulty was that clubs had to communicate with both SSMU and ScotiaBank to receive funding. This made tracking requests for funding and club purchases unnecessarily convoluted.

Preparations for the switch have been ongoing for some time. Last year, former VP Finance Arisha Khan and her substitute, former VP Finance Esteban Herpin, proposed to transition SSMU accounts from ScotiaBank to RBC. Over the summer, Jun Wang, along with ScotiaBank staff, RBC bankers, and a handful of SSMU staff, began cataloguing SSMU club accounts, some of which existed only on paper. In the process they temporarily shut down inactive accounts for the summer and moved each account to RBC. The team also created customized software for SSMU, eliminating any need for mediators and making online banking for clubs simple and more accessible.

Wang trained club executives in the new system through eight workshops at the start of the school year. Communication issues between clubs and himself, lack of space, and limited personnel means that some clubs are still straggling behind, but the switch is still on track to be completed by next semester.

Wang is confident that the financial overhaul will simplify and strengthen the funding process. Clubs will be able to receive money from SSMU through direct deposits without needing to contact RBC, creating a trackable funding system.

This process requires clubs to assume complete financial responsibility. With the ScotiaBank system, confusion and clutter meant clubs were not made fully aware of guidelines, creating further problems for SSMU. Wang hopes that transforming the way in which clubs receive funds will make the banking system more approachable.

“This bank transfer legitimizes the [funding] process and makes sure clubs take banking more seriously,” Wang said. “[Access to bank accounts is] a big privilege that we are extending.”

Over the past few weeks, all SSMU funding underwent a ‘blackout’ period while accounts switched from ScotiaBank to RBC. Eva Ren, a SSMU funding commissioner, works directly with clubs to approve funds.

“All student groups that have been approved for funding cannot receive their funds until after the freeze,” Ren said.

F WORD, a McGill feminist multimedia magazine, needed funds for its launch party on Nov. 15. According to Judy Huang, an F WORD coordinator, the launch coincided with the blackout period.

“F WORD was able to work with both SSMU, and our printer to pay the printing cost through SSMU, which was great as it is the largest expense of the semester.” Huang said.  “The SSMU executives were helpful and definitely solved the printing issue. But, otherwise, all costs were paid out of our own pockets [as] we wait for our funds to be accessible again.”

According to Wang, when funds become available again next semester, clubs that were affected by the blackout will be refunded.

Wang plans to see the bank transfer through, even with the unforeseen complications that cropped up during the process. To help future VP Finance executives continue the transfer smoothly, he plans to refine and document each step during his term.

“Hopefully, out of this will come something a lot better,” Wang said. “Moving forward, we’ll have institutional memory so that the next VP Finance knows exactly what to do instead of creating a process from scratch.”

McGill, News, SSMU

Constitutional challenge contested in judicial hearing

by Kyle Dewsnap on

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The Student Society of McGill University’s (SSMU) Judicial Board (J-Board) held a hearing on Nov. 20 to determine if the Anti-Violence Fee Levy (AVFL) motion was constitutional. The AVFL passed referendum on Nov. 12 with 79.4 per cent of students in favour of the creation of the new fee, which would fund the implementation of the Gendered and Sexual Violence Policy (GSVP). Arts and Science Senator Bryan Buraga, the SSMU representative who referred the matter to the J-Board’s authority, firmly set the stakes for the hearing in his opening statement.

“[This petition] is a case of sexual violence,” Buraga said.  “This will set a [precedent] for survivors.”

Buraga argued that the AVFL passed with an insufficient number of movers, or individuals supporting the motion. The Internal Regulations of Elections and Referenda (IR-ER) requires referendum questions to have at least four movers before being approved by the SSMU Legislative Council; the AVFL only had three when it passed. Buraga also claimed that the SSMU executives showed poor judgement when they did not immediately allocate funding for the GSVP. He asserted that SSMU has the capital to pay for it given that, following last month’s Children of the Corn Halloween event, SSMU expects to reimburse students $10,000 in Uber fares after they were unable to provide transportation back from Macdonald Campus.

“SSMU has found funding for other ad-hoc expenses,” Buraga said “The VP Internal said that SSMU priotisizes safety over cost, but the executive has demonstrated the opposite.”

Although he was listed as a respondent on Buraga’s petition, SSMU Vice-President (VP) Finance Jun Wang was absent from the hearing. Wang, who is responsible for financing the GSVP, stated that he didn’t believe that his presence at the hearing was warranted.

“[My absence] is a statement to be made to the filer of the petition to say how much I don’t believe that this is a matter of constitutionality, but rather [Buraga] is just trying to strike down this fee,” Wang said. “I believe that most people will understand that, with the building closure, the budget is not there and that we’re running at a deficit. If I were to attend the hearing, I would just be repeating that.”

SSMU President Tre Mansdoerfer argued that Buraga has overlooked a contradiction in SSMU policy. The Internal Regulations of Governance (IR-G) state that the Standing Rules determine the number of movers a motion needs to pass: Currently, at least three movers are required. In cases where internal regulations contradict each other, the rules within the IR-G take precedence over the IR-ER.

“Main motions require a minimum of three (3) movers to be presented before Council,” the Standing Rules read.

Buraga replied that there is no contradiction between the IR-ER requiring four movers and the IR-G requiring three. He reasoned that the IR-G only claims that it is necessary to have at least three movers, not that having at least three movers is sufficient, leaving room for additional requirements.

In response to Buraga’s accusation of poor judgement, Loïc Welch, a law student at McGill who represented Mansdoerfer at the hearing, argued that the executive has acted in a manner that assures SSMU student security.

“The President and the executive clearly acted within their standards of care,” Welch said. “They quickly moved the AVFL through SSMU in order to fund the GSVP.”

Buraga, who detailed his own experience with sexual violence in a Letter to the Editor of The McGill Tribune, closed his statement with an impassioned plea to the justices.

“There is an immediate crisis of funding […] and, as a result, I have not been able to get the protection I need,” Buraga said. “No student should have to stand here and go through this.”

Chief Justice Georgina Hartono announced that the J-Board will have two weeks to deliberate.  A written judgement will be submitted to the Board of Directors on Dec. 4, and the Board will either affirm, issue an order for amendment, or deny the judgement.

Creative

SSMU Who? | Episode 1: What is SSMU?

by Sofia Mikton, Tony Wang, Bilal Virji on

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SSMU… Who?

In the first episode of our SSMU Series, Keating Reid investigates what the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) is and does.

Video by Sofia Mikton, Tony Wang, and Bilal Virji

Hosted by Keating Reid

Features

Why we stay silent

by Abeer Almahdi on

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I was nine when I first became a victim of sexual violence. I was assaulted again when I was 12, then again when I was 13, and then I stopped counting—so many different people, and so many different faces to remember. Flashbacks are unpredictable. The first snow of the season reminded me of his cold, ashy breath on my neck. I started picking at my nails because of him, and, now, whenever I look at my hands, I think of him. Sometimes, when I’m completing a mundane task like washing my clothes or brushing my teeth, I recall an event that I had almost forgotten about. I see my abusers’ faces in every nightmare, in shadows while I’m trying to sleep.
Off the Board, Opinion

The elephant in the room

by Erica Stefano on

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Among other deeply instilled habits I’ve developed as a socially-anxious introvert, I make a point of not sharing my political opinions. Somewhere in the midst of the chaotic depression of high school, I found myself a political outsider in my liberal home state of Massachusetts. I was convinced I would certainly become a victim of political violence upon arrival to the so-called leftist hordes of university, a fear ignited by the countless riots in response to conservative speakers at colleges across the country. There’s a misconception in conservative circles that there is no need for safe spaces. However, with the prevalence of violent polarization and the social precedent it sets, everyone needs a sanctuary among the mayhem, conservatives included.

My concerns are perhaps overwrought, but I never got over the lingering fear that the outing of my political beliefs would sever ties with those who love me the most. This fear was only amplified during the 2016 American presidential primaries, when my mother made an uncomfortable habit of pointing out my support for Republican candidate John Kasich to my extended family. This was often met with the well-meaning but overtly-patronizing remark that, surely, I was just mistaken. When my grandfather passed away, I was haunted by the idea that, had I spoken out about my politics when he was alive, he would have had a similar reaction.

Politics has a way of breaking the boundaries of unconditional love. Beyond unfriending Facebook friends with opposing political opinions after elections, the experience of being cut off from one’s family as a result of divergent political views has too often become a reality. As American Thanksgiving looms, so do the articles on how to cope with a loved one being a Trump supporter. As politics are increasingly viewed as synonymous with morality and values, splitting from family members with differing political opinions seems to have materialized as an ethically-viable position. Dehumanizing Republicans has become both morally acceptable and the progressive norm.

The theoretical gap between moral values and stances on government policies is often neglected. Believing in something universal, such as wanting to help others, means different things for different people in the realm of politics. Being for or against gun control does not affect the general stance that mass shootings are abhorrent and unnecessary tragedies. Regardless of political beliefs, most people ultimately want the best for themselves and those they love.

It’s hard for people to separate arguments and ideas from the individuals pronouncing them. People avoid open debates because of their uncomfortable tendency to strain relationships. In the predominantly centre-left university context, this affects who chooses to speak up, and, at a more fundamental level, who feels safe to do so.

After two years at McGill, I have found environments in which open debates are both appreciated and encouraged. Events at McGill such as Freedom Week, run by the Institute for Liberal Studies, supplies a long series of lectures on libertarian topics and is open to undergraduate and graduate students of various political leanings. I’ve also found clubs such as Conservative McGill, as well as friends with similar views. Finding those groups has given me the confidence that I never thought I would have to speak out in class and conferences. For our emotional well-being, we all need a place to feel at home.

McLennan
Commentary, Opinion

Curing the McLennan blues

by Leina Gabra on

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For many students, midterms, paper writing, and the pressure of the approaching finals season means that they must spend the majority of their waking hours in the infamous McLennan-Redpath Library Complex. McLennan-Redpath is known to evoke strong feelings of anxiety, dread, and stress among its dwellers, due in large part to its drab lighting and brutalist architectural scheme. The libraries’ condition is an issue that Tre Mansdoerfer, president of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), has raised with administration.

“Everyone, including the librarians, agree that [McLennan] is very outdated and that whoever originally built the building did a poor job of planning it,” Mansdoerfer said. “It’s a really sad place to be in.”

McGill must respond to students’ grievances regarding McLennan-Redpath with the extensive and necessary changes for students to be able to work productively in their library. To this end, McGill proposed the Fiat Lux project in 2014, a library improvement project that aims to address concerns by focusing on acquiring digital materials over print and expanding physical userspace. The plan includes a total overhaul of the library’s outdated construction and footprint. Fiat Lux is a three-phase plan that would begin by moving McLennan/Redpath’s unused books off-site and then completely rebuilding the Redpath Library, before, finally, renovating McLennan to increase much-needed natural light and allow for greater ease of movement.

The McLennan-Redpath complex is the largest library on campus, but students often cannot find space to work in the library, leaving them with few options for quiet study spots on campus. This is detrimental to students’ mental health and, consequently, their schoolwork. Little has been done to improve McLennan since it was built over 50 years ago, and its impracticality has burdened McGill students for just as long. Change is long overdue.

In 2018, McGill announced plans to shift some of its collection around over the summer to create 100 new study spots on the second floor. But, just from looking at the crowds of students in McLennan this midterm season, it’s obvious that more than a few hundred extra seats are necessary. According to the Fiat Lux Master Plan, libraries at a public research university of McGill’s size should be able to accommodate 15–25 per cent of the student population with 30-35 square feet allocated per seat. However, all of McGill’s libraries combined have space for a mere nine per cent of its population. So, it’s only natural that McLennan often feels so cramped and overcrowded that you can practically feel other students’ stress emanating throughout it.

Despite the 30-page master plan published in 2015, the Fiat Lux webpage seems to have been abandoned since then, with little information regarding the timelines of these improvements or whether they will ever come to be. The SSMU Library Improvement Fund website is also outdated and provides little useful information. McGill seems to have begun implementing the first phase of the plan, but this is also unclear: A common theme throughout the McLennan improvement plan. However, according to Mansdoerfer, the university plans to have the project completed some time in the next decade.

Improving McLennan and the rest of McGill’s libraries should be one of the school’s top priorities, although, right now, it clearly is not. Its lack of quiet study spaces or group study areas, sufficient lighting, and general inaccessibility make it much more difficult for McGill students to study. We should not have to worry about these factors on top of our already strenuous workloads.

The SSMU Library Improvement Fund Committee (LIFC) is accepting proposals to improve the downtown McGill libraries. Students will no doubt have a lot to say.

Science & Technology

Tuberculosis: Where are we now?

by Krithika Ragupathi on

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“We need to science the shit out of tuberculosis,” Madhukar Pai, director of the McGill Global Health Programs, said in front of the United Nations (UN) at their headquarters in New York in September.

The meeting was a historic event; it was the first-ever high-level UN meeting organized to address the ongoing tuberculosis (TB) crisis. Pai’s statement to the General Assembly was an appeal for politicians to increase investment in research and development.

TB continues to be the leading infectious disease killer, claiming the lives of about 1.7 million people in 2016– approximately equal to the entire population of Montreal the same year. An estimated USD$1.3 billion per year supplement to the existing budget is required to fund newer drugs and discontinue the use of antiquated diagnostic tools. Current drugs used to treat MDR-TB, a drug-resistant form of the disease, are highly toxic with side-effects that include deafness. Given the necessary funding, the UN aims to eradicate the disease by 2030.

Although those fighting to eradicate TB pushed country leaders to be present at the meeting in New York and to support the initiative, attendance was underwhelming. None of the G7 heads of state, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, were present. The only key political invitee present was South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Pai described the turnout as disappointing.

“It is still very hard for TB to be a political priority,” Pai said in an interview with The McGill Tribune.

Between 2014 and 2016, Ebola caused an estimated 11,000 deaths while, in that same period, TB killed more than three million. Pai attributes the lack of concern among politicians to the fact that, unlike other epidemics in the past, TB continues to affect the poorest strata of the world’s population.

“People are quietly dying”, Pai said.“[Politicians] have become desensitized to it.”

In an op-ed for the Huffington Post, Pai stated that, if each country spent 0.1 per cent of its annual gross domestic expenditure on research and development (GERD) on TB, the UN could collectively meet its $1.3 billion USD per year budget. Pai believes that the ongoing TB crisis is a result of an unwillingness on the part of political leaders to allocate funds, rather than a difficult scientific problem to solve. His sentiments allude to the colonial roots of global health, which the numbers suggest are still an influence today.  

“The fact that we have TB up north in our Inuit communities three hundred-fold higher than here tells you that this is not a science issue,” Pai said.

With regard to the future of tuberculosis research, Pai stressed that high-burden TB countries should lead the discourse going forward.

“[The] TB agenda is still being dictated by rich white people from countries with hardly any TB,” Pai said.

Currently, global health initiatives are mostly funded by the United States. According to Pai, this puts global health in a one-sided and precarious position.

“All of global health is under threat under the Trump administration,” Pai said.

Passing the baton to high-burden TB countries that have the money and tools to tackle the problem would be the next advisable step. Pai believes that China and India have the resources and money to take the lead. Furthermore, he thinks it is crucial to involve TB survivors in the conversation to foster a strong civil society movement that will hold politicians accountable for their progress on the issue.

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