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Know Your Athlete, Martlets, Sports, Volleyball

Know Your Athlete: Emilie Matte de Grasse

by Kaja Surborg on

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Fifth-year power hitter Emilie Matte De Grasse grew up already immersed in the sporting world. Her mother was a physical education teacher; her father was a hockey player. Now, Matte de Grasse is in her 13th volleyball season, but before volleyball, she practiced other sports, too.

“I did gymnastics when I was younger, but I quit because I was too tall,” Matte de Grasse said. “Sport has always been around me, though.”

At the start of high school, Matte de Grasse tried out for both the basketball and volleyball teams but, ultimately, decided to stick to volleyball. At that point, she knew that she wanted to play for McGill, especially since her high school assistant coach was coaching at McGill as well. Matte de Grasse was convinced that McGill was where she wanted to be.

“She brought us to the games [and] gave us McGill gear,” Matte de Grasse said. “She had a big influence on how I saw McGill, […] as an awesome place to play.”

Long-time Martlet Head Coach Rachele Béliveau has also played an important part in Matte de Grasse’s volleyball journey.

“Rachele is awesome,” Matte de Grasse said. “If I have nothing to do, I can just go talk to her for hours about volleyball or anything. She’s honestly the best coach I’ve had [….] We know that she believes in us.”

Matte De Grasse has changed how she approaches the game over the years.

“My first year, I was just there to get on the court,” Matte De Grasse said. “[As a] rookie, you don’t expect to play all the time. With the years, you learn to take up more space and talk more, and, this year, I’m just playing to have fun.”

Now in her final year, Matte De Grasse feels that the older members of the team share the leadership responsibilities. Personally, she tries to lead by example.

“You want to show the first-years how to do it,” Matte De Grasse said. “If we have weights to do, I’m not going to force you to come, but I’m going to do it to show that it’s important and that the results show on the court.”

Matte De Grasse has not yet decided on a path after graduation, but she thinks that she’ll stay involved with volleyball in some way; her degree in physical education gives her an avenue to do so.

“I think I’ll try to stay involved with the team as much as possible, but I’m not sure if I’m ready to commit to coaching a full team yet,” Matte de Grasse said.

Matte De Grasse feels that volleyball has helped her prepare for the real world beyond university. Learning to work with a team and developing a good work ethic are both skills that she has developed in her years on the court. Like many other students nearing the end of their undergraduate careers, however, she still has hesitations.

“I have no clue what I’m doing next year,” Matte De Grasse said. “I’m not sure I’m ready to fully commit to being a grown-up.”

Matte de Grasse will leave a significant legacy behind her when she leaves the Martlets. The power-hitter has been a key offensive player for the Martlets this season: En route to their 8-1 record thus far, she has been the highest-scoring McGill player in six out of nine games, averaging 13.9 points per game. McGill has come up short in the RSEQ semifinals in their last two seasons, but, hopefully, Matte De Grasse can lead her team to a championship season in her finally campaign.

Student Life

Get cooking: Five recipe channels to let out your inner MasterChef

by Gabriela McGuinty on

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With countless day-to-day academic and social responsibilities, spending time buying groceries, deciding what to cook, and then actually preparing a well-balanced, nutritious meal can be an arduous task for students. To cater to those difficulties, online student-cooking outlets have sprouted up. The McGill Tribune has compiled a diverse list of cooking YouTube channels that break down how to make easy meals.

Spoon University

This channel has built a loyal fanbase with its quick and easy tutorials fit for cramped dorm kitchens. The videos range from a couple of seconds to a minute and a half in length, and the ingredients used in every recipe are pantry staples likely to be in any university student’s cupboard. They require little to no background in cooking, making them ideal for novices. Designed for undergraduates, these effortless meals will still give you a sense of gratification after a long night at the library.

HealthNut Nutrition

Those inspired to curate an aesthetically-pleasing lifestyle should follow HealthNut Nutrition. The channel is run by the passionate and health-conscious Nikole, who encourages her viewers to maintain healthy habits by showing them how easy it can be. Her channel also features some lifestyle commentary like “Morning Green Smoothie Recipe, Fears about Public Speaking and Yoga Event” and “A Week in My Life.” Some of the channel’s most popular videos include food life-hacks such as “20 Healthy Food Swaps” and “How to eat Chia Seeds- 3 ways.”

Tasty

Probably the most famous and sweetest channel on the list is Tasty; no student on Facebook has yet to come across one of these irresistible recipes during their hours of procrastination on social media. This channel is well-suited for sugar lovers, kitchen whizzes and complete culinary newbies alike. Tasty makes a point of using accessible, and, for the most part, cheap ingredients to create delicious-looking dishes that range from “creamy and satisfying pasta recipes” to a cinnamon roll apple pie.

Spain on a Fork

If you’re looking for a recipe channel that doubles as a step-by-step guide on how to cook a diverse cuisine outside of your comfort zone, then Spain on a Fork is your new go-to culinary channel. The YouTube page, run by a Spanish-born American, offers a guide to Spanish cuisine in an affordable and approachable way. Featuring tutorials on how to make the nation’s most beloved dishes, these videos aim to educate viewers on the wonders of Spanish cuisine. Students can learn to appreciate Spanish culture by making anything from a traditional tortilla de patatas to an abundant plate of paella. There’s no better way to learn about a culture than by enjoying some fine, homemade cuisine.

Nikkivegan

As the handle suggests, this channel shares vegan recipes; however, Nikkivegan stands out for its colourful feed and its emphasis on affordability. The creator, Nicole Vranjican, regularly highlights vegan recipes that are accessible to a broad range of people by ensuring that they use common and budget-friendly ingredients to produce nutrient-rich recipes. She also believes in the art of balance and treating yourself while staying fit. In one of her most popular videos, Nicole even touches on how one can stay healthy on a lazy day, giving her viewers no excuse to eat junk food. Visit her channel to stay motivated while maintaining a flexible, nutritious diet.

 

Campus Spotlight, Student Life

PGSS Zero-Waste Market encourages sustainability

by Mary Keith on

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The Post Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) held its inaugural Eco-Week Nov. 12-25. Over the course of the event, PGSS is hosting talks and workshops that encourage students to reduce their waste outputs. Students from across campus browsed eco-friendly products at the the Nov. 16 Zero-Waste Market, which demonstrated a promising wave of enthusiasm for zero-waste and eco-friendly initiatives.

Konstantina Chalastara, PGSS internal affairs officer and Jenna McMullan, PGSS student life coordinator, organized the Zero-Waste Market. According to Chalastara, the market’s purpose is to teach the McGill community about zero-waste alternatives and to showcase the work of Montreal-based, eco-friendly businesses.

“[PGSS] wants to bring awareness to the McGill community about local businesses […] through talks on becoming eco-friendly and reducing waste [in order] to recognize that [living an environmentally-friendly lifestyle] doesn’t have to be a huge change,” Chalastara said.

Chalastara and McMullan hope that, after attending the event, participants will integrate environmentally-friendly practices into their daily routines.

“We want to show how you can make small changes because we understand that as students, you need options that are going to be feasible, both economically and with your time,” McMullan said.

Each business at the market offered products to help students move toward a zero-waste lifestyle. Boutique DDD, one of the participating businesses, sells a range of reusable household items such as straws and sandwich bags. Founder Luce Mainguy’s objective is to provide high-quality and aesthetically-pleasing products that are produced responsibly.

“The goal of [Boutique DDD] is [that] all of our products encompass [certain] criteria [focusing on…] design [and] environment,” Mainguy said. “We sell a large range of products […] for zero-waste lifestyles, […some of which are] made from biodegradable [materials].”

L’Atelier Candide, another vendor at the event, produces sustainable cosmetics. At the market, founder Solis Nahum showcased a range of everyday essentials, including solid shampoos, deodorants, and soaps, that are packaged without plastic.

“I started [L’Atelier Candide] to feature socially-conscious brands […] that positively impact our society,” Nahum said.  “The idea of the online website is to bring companies together in the same place […] that reflect [similar] values. We sell personal care products [that] are wrapped in small, compostable cartons [or] fabric.”

Alongside the vendors’ kiosks, PGSS and the Social Equity and Diversity Education Office (SEDE) hosted a clothing swap to which attendees could bring old wardrobe items to exchange for other donated clothes. The swap aimed to help move away from the consumer mindset of buying and throwing away, since the fashion industry generates large amounts of pollution and waste.

“With the clothing swap, sometimes [zero-waste] is indirect, […] but the fashion industry represents [a notable amount] of the world’s pollution,” McMullan said. “So, a clothing swap allows you to have the same fun of something new without adding to that pollution.”

Chalastara and McMullan believe that Eco-Week events have encouraged a necessary discussion about wastefulness on campus.

“Universities are a great place for conversations about how individuals can make a difference,” McMullan said.

Through this work, the organizers hope that students exposed to zero-waste products during the festivities will be more inclined to adopt more sustainable habits and reduce their personal environmental impact.

Science & Technology

Can you sea the floor?

by Caroline Lou on

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From the heights of the ozone layer to the depths of the ocean, greenhouse gas emissions have far reaching impacts and damage natural systems in often unexpected ways.

A recent study conducted by McGill researchers found that the seafloor is rapidly dissolving due to manmade CO2 emissions, with particularly notable effects in the northern Atlantic and near the Southern Ocean.

The seafloor is covered by layers of sediment that contain the mineral calcite (CaCO3), which is formed from the remains of plankton and corals. Calcite combats ocean acidification by neutralizing CO2, a compound which lowers the pH of seawater when dissolved. Additionally, calcite serves as a historical environmental record; scientists have extracted and dated core samples from the ocean floor and found that thinner layers of calcite correspond with time periods that had higher atmospheric CO2 levels. This means that the mitigation of ocean acidification comes at a high price: The dissolution of calcite is also erasing the geological record of greenhouse periods and ocean acidification episodes throughout millions of years of history.

Bernie Boudreau, a member of the research team and a professor at Dalhousie University’s Department of Oceanography, noted the importance of the geological record in predicting future climate change developments.

“Unfortunately, we cannot now predict exactly how drastic future changes will be.” Boudreau wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune.  “However, if we look at the geological record of past acidification, we might be able to see what happened back then […by examining] species extinctions, temperature changes, continental flooding [etcetera] which are all recorded in past sediments. Scientists can then inform the public what happened then and what might happen in the future. So, the geological information is highly significant.”

To examine the effects of CO2 on calcite dissolution, the researchers replicated seafloor environments in the lab using information from recent databases of bottom-water chemistry, sediment surface-level currents, and the calcite content of deep-sea sediments. After comparing pre-industrial and present-day dissolution rates, the researchers found that, in the western North Atlantic Ocean, a significant portion of seafloor dissolution—between 40 to 100 per cent in certain locations—is attributable to human activity. Researchers noted increased dissolution rates at various locations in the south of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans.

While the destruction of the geological records is a loss for scientific history, Olivier Sulpis, a PhD candidate in McGill’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, is especially concerned with the impacts on living organisms.

“If we start dissolving corals or plankton, it’s much more problematic [than just dissolving the geological record],” Sulpis said. “All the algae that live at the surface have shells made of calcite, and they are producing a lot of oxygen. That [oxygen is] useful.”

Sulpis explained that the dissolution of the seafloor is only a symptom of the larger problem: That anthropogenic CO2 emissions have reached such high levels in the first place.

“I think the important [fact to realize] is [that] we are slowly changing the chemistry of the ocean,” Sulpis said. “It’s more about CO2 than the dissolving seafloor itself. What’s scary is the fact that, because the seafloor is already dissolving in various areas of the world, it means that we have emitted enough CO2 to cause this.”

Moving forward, the researchers plan to model how seabed dissolution may evolve in potential future CO2 emission scenarios. In the meantime, their findings serve as yet another warning that humans must find a way to curb greenhouse gas emissions, since a business-as-usual approach will have devastating impacts on the ocean and its inhabitants.

McGill, News

North Korean defector Alice Kim emphasizes the power of policies

by Helen Wu on

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McGill Students for HanVoice, a non-profit that advocates for North Korean human rights, hosted “Alice Kim: The Journey of a North Korean Defector” on Nov. 16. The event featured two speakers: Kazue Takamura, professor at McGill’s Institute for the Study of International Development, and Alice Kim herself, who is in Canada as part of the HanVoice Pioneer Project. The six-month project offers North Korean refugees internships with Canadian parliamentarians in addition to training in advocacy and leadership. Kim finished a bachelor’s degree at Yonsei University in South Korea and just completed her first semester as a master’s candidate in political science and international studies.

Takamura discussed barriers to refugees accessing healthcare, education, shelter, and food. She emphasized that the estimated 100,000 to 300,000 North Korean refugees  living abroad experience ‘protracted rightlessness’ when they defect to neighbouring countries, including Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Laos.

“Their rightlessness begins within the territory of North Korea,” Takamura said. “We hear so many stories about starvation and hunger in North Korea [. . .] so, before the departure, they face violence by their own country.”

Alice Kim was only two-years-old when her family arrived in South Korea in 1997. Born in Pyongyang, she grew up in a 500-square foot apartment in Seoul with her parents and younger sister, only discovering her family’s history when peers at school began to speculate about her origins.

“One day at school, a friend approached me and accused me of something I will never forget, ‘North Koreans like you survive on our South Korean taxes, so you are my slave. You have to follow my order,”’ Kim said.

Kim explained that she was a target for bullies because some South Koreans did not believe that aiding North Korean refugees was a good use of public funds.

“In the minds of South Koreans, they saw it as taxpayers’ dollars falling into my family’s  hands,” Kim said.

Kim learned that her parents had both been government officials of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. In 1996, her father was promoted to a diplomatic position in China, which allowed the family to travel internationally as long as they complied to the government’s specifications.

“Like all other diplomats, moving abroad means that the family could accompany on one condition: One member of the family has to be left behind [in North Korea],” Kim said. “As an infant, I was prone to illness, so my parents chose to take me instead of my older sister. She was just six [years-old].”

Kim’s father began to criticize Kim Jong-Il’s policies during the 1994-1998 North Korean famine, jeopardizing the family’s safety.

“My father commented to others that Kim Jong-Il’s policies caused more harm than good,” Kim said. “My dad understood he had become a threat to Kim Jong-Il’s power [….] One night, he felt a bullet fly by his ear, and my parents immediately planned to escape.”

Arriving in South Korea during Kim Dae-jung’s presidency and the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Kim’s family did not find much support. She critiqued Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine Policy, for which he received the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize, for being detrimental to North Korean refugees.

Kevin Seo, co-president of McGill Students for HanVoice, believes that Canada could be a prime destination for North Korean refugees. He urged the adoption of HanVoice’s North to North Project, which enables private sponsorship for North Korean refugee resettlement in Canada.

As Kim learned about the events that shaped North and South Korea’s history, she began to understand the influence of global leaders on the lives of countless people.

“In discovering my family history, I learned about the arbitrary lines that were drawn at moments in history which would change the course of my life,” Kim said. “If President Roosevelt and Stalin had not split our country in half in 1945, would there be a North or South Korea?”

Tearfully, Kim finished her story by describing plans to use her education as a tool to develop policies which will mitigate the pain experienced by Koreans.

“I plan to use policy tools like erasers and pens to redraw the lines that have changed the lives of countless North Korean people, and I hope, maybe, this imaginary line will lead me back to my older sister.”

Science & Technology

Tracking ‘Jaws’

by Margaret Wdowiak on

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Many lives could have been saved in the movie Jaws if only the town had an effective way of tracking the shark terrorizing their waters. Analysis of environmental DNA, or eDNA, is a revolutionary new technique that enables scientists to follow marine animals, no matter their size.

eDNA refers to the genetic material, such as feces or shedded skin, left behind by a living organism in their environment. Such materials previously had limited use, but, now, scientists can use gene sequencing techniques to extract and amplify DNA fragments from eDNA. This DNA can help to determine which species left the eDNA samples.

This technology is useful for efficiently tracking animals in waterways, enabling scientists to detect populations of a species in particular environments and their movements in an aquatic system. Being able to analyze eDNA also enables scientists to monitor the biodiversity of an entire region, helping them detect invasive species as well as monitor endangered and at-risk species that may be difficult to find. All of this information enables scientists to better understand how how humans impact biodiversity. eDNA also has many other unexpected uses.

“It can help us to discover where many species go in the winter-time, which is understudied” Jennifer Sunday, assistant professor in McGill’s Department of Biology, wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “Over time, it can help us to learn how fluid and variable species distributions and community compositions are across short and long time scales,”

Being able to see how the distribution of species changes over time as well as their movement patterns during the winter could further broaden our understanding of how changes in aquatic environments impact biodiversity.

eDNA offers certain advantages over traditional methods used to track marine life, chief of which is its non-invasive nature. Many traditional techniques for tracking marine life have harmful effects on animals. For example, fish tracked with electrofishing, which immobilizes them using electrical currents, frequently sustain injuries.

“eDNA has the potential to dramatically reduce the time and effort put into visual and capture surveys in the field, i.e. traditional methods,” Sunday said. “In doing so, it opens the door to much more frequent sampling over both space and time. This is key, especially [for] marine environments which are difficult to sample repeatedly [and] especially in the winter months. [It can] completely transform how we can observe biodiversity in the oceans.”

Therefore, eDNA can provide a more detailed picture of an ecosystem than traditional techniques. It provides a better picture because it is more accurate and it can detect more species  than conventional methods.  

“The future of this technology is, if organized well, a systematic, grounded in-truth observation network across Canada and hopefully across the world, to completely change the way that we observe changes in the oceans,” Sunday said.

Like all advances, though, the technology is not perfect.

“Much work needs to be done to overcome uncertainties in methodologies, including sources of bias from field to bench methods, and also to organize the efforts so that samples are comparable,” Sunday said.

Like many tracking systems, a major limit of this technology is that it only gives an indication of where the animal has been, not where it is currently. Animals can move long distances in the time it takes for eDNA to degrade. Additionally, eDNA particles can drift dramatically due to currents, reducing researchers’ ability to pinpoint the location of a particular animal.

Editorial, Opinion

Social work students deserve compensation

by The McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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Unpaid and underpaid labour is pandemic in university culture; from internships to extracurriculars, students are often encouraged to take on work that pays in ‘experience’ rather than monetary compensation. From Nov. 19 to 23, the Social Work Students’ Association (SWSA) and the Social Work Association of Graduate Students (SWAGS) are on strike to protest their programs’ mandatory unpaid internships. Unpaid internships are an economic barrier that unfairly restrict students from lower-income backgrounds, and students deserve to be compensated for their labour.

Not only are social work students’ mandatory fieldwork hours unpaid, but, students pay to work them: According to SWSA, students have to pay tuition for fieldwork courses as they would for any other course. Students are not even compensated fairly in credits, as they must complete 12 credits of field placement courses to graduate with a BSW. Each course entails 200 hours of practicum work, or 15 hours per week. By definition, three-credit courses should consist of three hours a week of instructional time. The 12 hours of extra work a week that social work students perform without academic credit mean that, over the 800 hours of required for a BSW, social work students are short-changed 624 credits. Furthermore, social work students are expected to commute for up to one hour to their placements if necessary, adding to the unrecognized burden they carry.

The social work students’ strike is part of a broader protest against unpaid internships in Quebec which is organized by the Comités unitaires sur le travail étudiant (CUTE). Working without pay is a common experience for students, be it at community or campus organizations or as part of a degree: Like social work students, undergraduate students in education are required to complete four unpaid fieldwork assignments. These field placements are necessary and mandatory additions to the social work program. Social work requires immersive training, and it is imperative that students’ educations reflect that reality. Experiential learning is a valuable educational method, especially in a field like social work where much of the work is demanding, especially from an emotional perspective.

Even when unpaid labour is not an academic requirement, students’ desires to build work experience or help their fellow students make them vulnerable to exploitation. This is especially true of students’ emotional labour. The Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS), a Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) service that provides support to students who have experienced sexual violence, is staffed exclusively by volunteers; McGill’s Office for Sexual Violence Response, Support and Education (OS-VRSE) also has student volunteers. Walksafe, a SSMU service that accompanies students walking home alone at night, similarly depends on unpaid work. McGill and SSMU must offer financial support to these essential services  in order to ensure that employees’ work is properly compensated.

Paying social work students for their fieldwork entails obvious financial complications, as most host organizations are non-profits. However, the School of Social Work (SSW) and its community partners have an ethical obligation to work with social work students’ associations to find a sustainable long-term solution to these issues. That solution should include pay. For example, McGill, unlike most Canadian universities of its size, does not offer a co-op program; adopting a similar model for social work students ought to be considered.

The SSW faculty planned to stand in solidarity with the strikers by cancelling classes this week, but were directed to continue instruction as usual in an email sent by School of Social Work Director Nico Trocmé and Dean of Arts Christopher Manfredi.

“Teaching faculty support the concerns of the students, but we do have a requirement to teach classes, both as part of our legal requirements and with respect to requirement [to provide instruction],” said Trocmé, director of the School of Social Work, said to The McGill Tribune. “Any student who requests class is entitled to have class.”

The SSW faculty efforts to support SWSA strikers were upended by Trocmé and Manfredi’s sudden decision to continue classes. Trocmé and Manfredi’s statement blatantly ignores students’ actual requests: Social work students overwhelmingly voted to strike, and this decision should be respected by the McGill administration.

Unpaid internships are not just detrimental to those undertaking them, and their inaccessibility to those without outside financial support perpetuates broader social and economic inequalities. Social work students provide an essential service to society by helping those who need it most. They deserve compensation and a better deal—from their school and host organizations alike.

 

SWSA’s protest will be held from 3–6 p.m. from Nov. 21 at Place Émilie-Gamelin.

McGill, News

Social work students strike against unpaid internships

by Jacqueline Yao on

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Social work students will participate in a strike against mandatory unpaid internships Nov. 19-23. The Social Work Student Association (SWSA) had previously voted at their Oct. 24 General Assembly to join undergraduate student associations at UQAM and Université de Montréal in demanding internship remuneration from the provincial government. In solidarity, the McGill School of Social Work (SSW) had intended on cancelling classes on Nov. 19-23, but is legally bound to maintain classes.

SWSA has been planning the strike since the beginning of the semester and had previously supported the Feb. 20 Global Intern Strike that called on employers to pay their interns.

U2 and U3 students enrolled in the BSW program are required to complete 200 hours of unpaid field placement work for 3 credits each year. According to Jacqueline Ohayon, SWSA activities coordinator, many BSW students work unpaid for 16 hours per week in addition to completing a full course load. She believes that unpaid internships  widen the wage gap and are inaccessible to marginalized groups.

“The fields that have unpaid internships are not only women-dominated but are [also] care-centered,” Ohayon said. “The narrative that people [in social work] are made for self-sacrifice […] has to be fought, and [the misconception shows that] society doesn’t value and doesn’t care about our profession.”

SWSA hopes that the Quebec Ministry of Education can compensate students for their work and establish labour standards for internships that are part of a degree program. Quebec’s Act Respecting Labour Standards protects only employees and paid interns by enforcing minimum acceptable working conditions on wage, length of a workweek, vacation time, and psychological harassment. Ohayon explained that the absence of an overarching policy about workplace standards puts unpaid interns at risk.

“All the conditions of the intern lie in the hands of [authorities such as the] field supervisor, field director, professor, [or] seminar professor,” Ohayon said. “There are a lot of people who were asked to be closeted during field placements because [their supervisors] said that [revealing one’s sexual orientation] was not appropriate.”

At the Nov. 14 SSW faculty meeting, the teaching faculty unanimously voted to cancel classes Nov. 19-23 in favour of extra classes in December or additional assignments. However, the McGill administration has since reminded teachers of their duty to follow the schedule.

“Teaching faculty support the concerns of the students, but we do have a requirement to teach classes, both as part of our legal requirements and with respect to the requirement [to provide instruction],” Nico Trocmé, director of the School of Social Work, said. “Any student who requests class is entitled to have class.”

Trocmé still expressed support for students participating in the strike and hopes that the Ministry of Education can relieve their financial burden.

“The School [of Social Work] has no funds to pay for internships, and many of the community agencies that students do their internships in have very limited budgets,” Trocmé wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “Not only would [financial compensation for internships] relieve some pressure on students who have to assume part-time jobs or go into debt, but it would also […] attract students who, otherwise, cannot afford to obtain a professional degree and help increase the diversity of students in our programs.”

Students in most programs will not need to schedule extra field hours. Masters in Couple and Family Therapy studies must make up for missed internship hours because the Ordre des travailleurs sociaux et des thérapeutes conjugaux et familiaux du Québec has strict accreditation standards for their program. SSW is currently trying to negotiate for fewer field placement requirements with accreditation organizations for social work programs.

Theresa*, U1 Arts, supports the strike and believes that either the government or the agencies should pay for students’ work.

“If you want students to spend time, energy, and money on a certain cause, they must be remunerated,” Theresa said. “Time spent on these placements is money lost.”

*Name has been changed at the request of the source.

Commentary, Opinion

Remembering Izy

by Evelyn Goessling on

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My beloved friend Isabella Guerrico, U3 Arts, passed away in a sudden accident on Thursday, Nov. 15. We will remember Izy, who was beloved by many in the McGill community, for her fiery and generous spirit.

When I moved into Gardner three years ago, I had no idea what was in store for me. I thought I would make new friends, have fun partying, and learn a few things in school, but I had no idea that I would meet some of the most important people in my life. Izy was one of those people. For a while I just knew her from afar by her bright turquoise hair and  cool tattoos and piercings. Her style was absolutely iconic. Before long, I could tell that she was something really special. She had this amazing ability to be completely herself and very independent, but at the same time make others feel included.

As I know many people from Gardner that year fondly remember, in the first months of school, when it was still warm enough outside, we would all sit on the stoop and smoke and talk and talk and talk. Izy had an amazingly loud voice and a laugh that drew me in. She had so much energy and passion for whatever she talked about, and she made me feel like it was okay to be myself, and be myself as loudly as possible. She would probably be embarrassed that I’m saying that she was loud, but I loved that about her. Izy was one of the most social people I knew. She always wanted to be out there in the world, in the centre of it all, experiencing things as fiercely as possible.

(Evelyn Goessling / The McGill Tribune)

 

Although Izy was extroverted in some ways, she was also shy about certain things. I didn’t know the extent of her passion for music until we were in a music history class together in third year. I learned that Izy was a cellist and a singer and had toured with her orchestra and choir in high school. We would study together at her apartment and listen to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack. One time we watched the Mozart movie Amadeus together, which is one of our favourite movies. Then, the next day, she told me she watched it over again! That movie is three hours long! I laughed but was not surprised. Izy was always doing things like that. Just the other day, she bought and started reading a very large book about the history of soccer tactics. She was so passionate about the things she loved, whether it was her family or her favourite soccer team, FC Barcelona

When Izy became my roommate at the beginning of this year, I wondered how I had ever lived without her. In the morning, she would always emerge from her room and say good morning, with a smile already on her face. She had such a beautiful smile. It truly radiated from her whole being and always put me in a good mood.

(Izy Guerrico / The McGill Tribune)

 

It’s impossible to write down all the things I want to remember about Izy. She had the funniest expressions and reactions to things. While I cooked, she would hang out with me and do funny little dances—’jigs,’ we always joked. In fact, we had to make a rule against jigs because it was too loud for our downstairs neighbours. Only quiet jigs allowed! We both had the habit of singing or humming to ourselves, and I loved how I would pick up on whatever she was singing, or she would do the same, and we would quietly sing together.

Izy loved very spicy hot sauce and coffee. She loved watching T.V., everything from Fargo and Curb Your Enthusiasm to any and every soccer game. She loved reading. One of her favourite books was The Brothers Karamazov. Izy spoke Spanish and often talked about moving back to Spain, where her family lives. We always talked about what kind of dogs we would get when we were old enough. Izy said she would never get married or have kids, and, instead, have three or four huge dogs, maybe a German shepherd, a dalmatian, and a cockapoo like her dog at home, Gus.

Izy, I will miss you forever. I can’t believe you won’t be graduating with me this year, but whatever the future brings, I promise I will try and live by your light. Thinking of you, I will push myself to live and love hard and bright, like you did.

(Izy Guerrico / The McGill Tribune)
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