Latest News

Know Your Athlete, Sports

Know Your Athlete: Tomas Jirousek

by Abeer Almahdi on

More in Know Your Athlete:

Tomas Jirousek is an indigenous athlete from the Kainai First Nation, a nation of the Blackfoot Confederacy. He is leading the #ChangeTheName campaign and demonstration on Oct. 31 at McGill that call for the university to change the varsity men’s sports teams’ ‘Redmen’ name. When he’s not making waves on campus, Jirousek makes waves on the water as a member of the McGill rowing team.

Once an avid hockey player, Jirousek was forced to quit due to knee problems. He knew he wanted to stay active, though, so he picked up rowing when he came to McGill two years ago.

“I really did want to be in a sport,” Jirousek said. “My parents were both varsity athletes in university, so I’d always wanted to follow that, so I’m glad I could find [rowing].”

Jirousek’s rowing career has enjoyed plenty of highlights so far.

“In my first year, I was able to make Team Quebec and represent the province at the Canada Games,” Jirousek said. “We had a fourth place finish in the Mens 8 [….] To also be the stroke seat of the Mens Heavy 8 in my first year was really an honour.”

Like any invested athlete, Jirousek has his fair share of pre-game rituals, which start with a song.  

“A little embarrassingly, I do love ‘Toxic‘ by Britney Spears before going on the water,” Jirousek said.

Aside from his athletic endeavours, Jirousek is the chairman of Indigenous Affairs Committee, the indigenous affairs commissioner at the Student’s Society of McGill University, and the special advisor on indigenous education to the director at the Social Equity Diversity Education Office. He also works at the First People’s House. Being involved with indigenous projects around campus is important to Jirousek, so he actively seeks them out.

“Basically anything indigenous, I typically like to get involved in,” Jirousek said. “I’m quite passionate about supporting the rights of my people.”

For Jirousek, the #ChangeTheName campaign is all about opening dialogue.

“Part of the reason why we’re launching this campaign and the demonstration is to first show our discontent,” Jirousek said. “[I want to start] an honest discussion where indigenous people can present their views because […] we’ve been cut out of the debate on the Redmen name [many times]. This is an opportunity for both sides of the debate to come together in a collaborative fashion.”

McGill men’s sports teams have used the name since the 1920s. Men’s sports teams picked up the nickname ‘Indians’, while ‘Squaws’ referred to the women’s teams. Up until 1992, the team logo was a stereotypical silhouette of a native person wearing a headdress.

Jirousek is adamant that the name, no matter its origins, is undeniably offensive.

“Denying the actual history of the Redmen name, regardless of whether the university is correct in its argument that the Redmen name comes from the school’s red colours or celtic origins, it doesn’t deny the fact that the Redmen name [has] become connected to indigenous people,” Jirousek said. “The fact [is] that we were known as the McGill ‘Indians’ and the McGill ‘Squaws,’ and the university willingly allowed this. That is difficult to reconcile as an athlete, and it’s difficult to reconcile as a student at the university.”

For many indigenous students like him, the name makes their experience as varsity athletes uncomfortable, and the indifference on campus leaves them feeling isolated and ignored.

“The first thing to understand is that indigenous people […] are the ones who are affected by this name,” Jirousek said. “Unless you are an indigenous student, you can’t really understand the pain and how isolated you feel because of the Redmen name. You can’t understand the pain [and] the history [that] the Redmen name continues to admit.”

Science & Technology

The psychology of fear

by Emma Gillies on

More in Science & Technology:

For some, Halloween means curling up on the couch and watching a favourite horror movie. The resulting jump scares, hellish demons, and bloody deaths provoke an emotion we are all too familiar with: Fear.

“Fear is an emotional state—the unpleasant feeling of being afraid—that emerges when we perceive an imminent threat to our safety,” Josué Haubrich, a postdoctoral researcher in McGill’s Department of Psychology, wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune.

The stimulus that invokes a fear response is often a physical threat, such as heights or spiders. However, it can also be psychological, as is the case with a fear of midterms or social rejection. When a person encounters a particularly-frightening stimulus, the brain reacts and sends signals to the rest of their body, which can result in a faster heart rate, shortness of breath, muscle tension, shaking, and feelings of panic and uneasiness.

Despite the sweaty palms and occasional screams conjured up by horror movies, many of us intentionally subject ourselves to situations that make us feel scared. Interestingly, this morbid attraction to fear is a product of evolution for humans and other mammals, honed by a long-time association between fear and survival.

“Fear is a natural and beneficial emotion that actually helps to keep us safe,” Haubrich wrote.

In fact, research suggests that humans have even evolved to enjoy experiencing fear in safe contexts. Like riding rollercoasters or playing hide and seek, watching horror movies enables us to trigger the instinctual thrill of adrenaline rushes while avoiding the costs of any actual danger. Developing a familiarity with fear even lets us establish coping strategies for dealing with real scares later in life.

“For most people, I think this is related [to] an avidity we have in experiencing different emotions,” Haubrich wrote. “Real-life threatening experiences trigger a number of biological responses aimed to prepare our [….bodies] for fight-or-flight responses. Part of these responses are triggered by horror films, and some people enjoy experiencing it in a safe environment.”

Humans like to experience emotions, especially the kinds that linger after the fact. This phenomenon is known as the ‘excitation transfer process,’ in which the physical reactions that accompany fear during the movie are later replaced with relief and intense positive feelings.

On the other hand, uncontrollable fear—the main cause of many anxiety-related disorders—is problematic and can even be incapacitating.

The continuum of mild to severe fear is a result of the interaction of different factors, including genetic variability—which gives individuals a predisposition to be fearful of something—as well as developmental factors such as childhood neglect or traumatic experiences. These factors influence why some people despise horror movies and why others can’t seem to get enough of them.

Another, gentler, factor may also be at work. Horror movies tend to evoke fear because they toy with empathy. They often involve characters that are not so different from us, arousing our ability to share others’ feelings. The fear is much more real when we can relate to the characters, which is why more empathetic viewers, who react very negatively to human suffering, tend to dislike horror movies.

Hollywood understands the psychology behind fear and uses it to enhance the effect of horror movies. These films play into common human fears such as the dark, the unusual, and death. Cinematically, they use techniques such as excessive use of negative space, spooky music, and prolonged scenes to make the audience tense and uncomfortable.

Still, our reactions to scary movies are not simply a product of the film industry’s clever techniques; they’re the result of life experience, personality, and human evolution. Similarly, Halloween is not simply a celebration of fear. As a day now known for its consumerism, costumes, and candy, Halloween’s more basic foundation is a celebration of the creativity of the human mind.

Letters to the Editor, Opinion

Letter to the Editor: Clarifying McGill’s treatment of LGTBQ+ students

by Will Aitken on

More in Letters to the Editor:

I suppose I should be delighted at the salute to LGBTQ alumni in The McGill Tribune‘s recent article “LGBTQ+ McGillians making history,” but it hardly makes up for the homophobic treatment I endured while at McGill in the early 70s. As a queer man writing a thesis about the queer Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood, I identified as queer in the preface to the thesis. This set off a year-long battle, during which the English department was fully committed to failing my thesis for that very reason. They only backed down after I hired a lawyer and with the help of many friends made their bigoted behavior an issue in the media.

I did finally receive my MA—I believe it was the first openly queer thesis written in Canada (but would certainly welcome evidence to the contrary). I never received an apology from the McGill English department or from the university itself.

Creative

Student Services’ changes to the mental health system

by Sofia Mikton & Tristan Surman on

More in Creative:

“There are studies out there that show that people actually get worse when they are waiting in line for a professional.”

We asked McGill Student Services about what changes they are making to McGill’s mental health system. Here is what they had to say.

Filmed by Tristan Surman. Edited by Sofia Mikton

Commentary, Opinion

It’s 2018, and STEM is still an uneven playing-field for women of colour

by Amrita Sandhu on

More in Commentary:

Concordia’s new Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science is the first engineering faculty in Canada to bear a woman’s name. The faculty’s renaming stems from Cody’s $15 million donation, the largest individual donation given in Concordia’s history. While it’s refreshing to see a woman of colour earn such an outstanding honour in a traditionally male-dominated faculty, the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) remain an uneven playing-field for men and women.

Over the past summer, I received an internship placement with a surgical unit at a prominent Toronto hospital. Before starting, I was excited to work with surgeons and observe firsthand the nature of the profession. After my first few weeks, however, I was disappointed when I observed the lack of female surgeons in my unit, and that of the few present, even fewer were women of colour.  I didn’t expect there to be such a noticeable gender and diversity gap, especially in a city like Toronto that prides itself on multiculturalism and inclusivity. My summer experience served as a reminder that even though medicine, like other STEM disciplines, is trending towards becoming more accessible to women, careers like surgery still lag behind.

Although female representation in STEM is growing, women of colour often find themselves excluded from this trend. Racial prejudice continues to hinder progress: Women of colour often feel the need to censor themselves and behave in ways that ‘suppress’ the perceived stereotypes of their ethnic groups. Women of colour have to avoid saying too much or too little to avoid being stereotyped as too angry or too submissive in their workplace settings. The first time someone at the hospital asked me if I wanted to pursue a career in nursing, I brushed it off. But, after being asked the same question repeatedly by male hospital personnel whom I encountered, and continuing to get looks of surprise when I specified that my interest lay in orthopedic surgery—a speciality in which 87.6 percent of practicing physicians in Canada are males—my patience waned. My male coworkers never received the same prejudicial line of questioning. As a woman of colour, I constantly found myself having to justify my right to be at the hospital.

Patronizing attitudes remain all too common in STEM, even in fields where the numbers of professional men and women are more equal, such as public safety and agriculture. Moreover, women of colour face greater incidences of sexual and racial harassment in the workplace, and STEM is no exception. When one of my fellow interns told me about the sexual and racially demeaning comments made to her by a patient, it was frustrating to realize that discrimination on the basis of sex and race is still such a common occurrence. The harsh reality is that workplace harassment is ingrained in the medical world. A third of female physicians report enduring some form of workplace harassment over the course of their career. One female surgeon told me that she has experienced racial and sexist prejudice throughout her career, even as she has ascended professionally. Even elite  professional status—like that of a surgeon—fails to shield women of colour from microaggressions and sexism.  

This is why the renaming of Concordia’s engineering faculty is monumental: Associating a woman of colour’s name and face with an engineering faculty normalizes their involvement in STEM fields. It is validating to see progress toward the inclusion of women in STEM, but, it is also crucial to continue recognizing women of colour’s contributions to break down lingering barriers to gender equality.

Features

Beyond the answer sheet

by Miya Keilin on

More in Features:

“Math is everywhere. To varying degrees, of course, but math is just something that’s everywhere,” Professor Limin Jao, assistant professor and assistant graduate program director in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, said in an interview with The McGill Tribune.

She’s right, of course. There’s math in our kitchens, on our walks to school, and in the way the clouds move. It’s everywhere, and though many of us try our best to live in denial, it will always be everywhere.

Student Life

Dean Buddle talks Reddit, podcasting, and student outreach

by Mary Keith on

More in Student Life:

As part of his duties as Dean of Students, Christopher Buddle shares weekly wisdom with McGillians through his Dean’s Corner newsletter. The column has garnered attention across campus, even leading to the new #buddlehuddle moniker for his student outreach efforts. Buddle sat down with The McGill Tribune to discuss the #buddlehuddle and his greater role as Dean of Students.

McGill Tribune (MT): What inspires the advice you give to students?

Christopher Buddle (CB): “[Dean’s Corner] serves a number of purposes [….] In many cases, it’s just kind of what I see as issues with students or in academia that maybe I can offer some advice or opinions [on], or highlight services [for….] I have a long […] list of different ideas, and I basically think about what’s going on around campus and what might be good advice or things to talk about at that time.  I always try to time some around midterms to [recommend] resources [….] Sometimes I just give advice from experience. I did that a couple weeks ago with a post called ‘Learning to Fail.’ I failed courses in my undergraduate [career], and it’s okay to fail. In fact, it’s normal for students to struggle academically now and then, and that doesn’t define you. That’s part of what it is to be a student and go through a transformation.”

MT: Do you have a favourite Dean’s Corner installment?

CB: “I made this [post], ‘Hey Prof Dude: How do we help students write effective emails,’ and I actually got pushback from students saying, ‘Well what about profs? Because they write horrible emails’ [….] We all have to be respectful and think about how we communicate with people all the time, so I loved that one [….] People still write me [emails addressed], ‘Hey, Prof Dude’ on purpose.”

MT: How did you find out about the Buddle Huddle?

CB: “I think it was embedded in the comments on Reddit. After I wrote the ‘Learning to Fail’ [post], some people questioned why the Dean of Students wrote them an email about failing. One of the comments was something around [joining the] #buddlehuddle, and I read it and thought, ‘well, that is outstanding,’ because that’s actually what I want to do. I want to find a way to connect with students. I think I can own that hashtag, [and it will] be beneficial in connecting with students.”

MT: Are there any plans to use a #buddlehuddle in the future to better connect with students?

CB: “Yes, I think [there are….] I’m constantly looking for ways to engage and to be accessible, and so, the ‘Buddle Huddle’ idea is one step in that journey. I’m thinking of starting a podcast in January [….] My goal […] is to answer questions that people have about the university [and] about the Dean’s office. I know students listen to podcasts, so I’ve got to go to where students are [….] I think I’m going to pursue a lot of those things. I think it’s great, and I’m not sure it’ll succeed. Some things work [and] some things don’t, but, who knows? I’ll try.”

MT: If you could only give one piece of advice to McGill students, what would it be?

CB: “[I would like students to know that] thinking and doing beyond the classroom is important [….] I don’t mean to not concentrate on academics, but, beyond the classroom [this might mean] finding your community. We all need friends [….] Loneliness and isolation are huge concerns for me among our students, so [a main focus is] how […] we facilitate getting beyond the classroom and developing that community, whether it’s support, whether it’s a club or activity, or whether it’s finding out what resources are available.”

Men's Varsity, Sports

Stingers snap Redmen rugby’s undefeated record

by Chiso Ufondu on

More in Men's Varsity:

On Oct. 19, the McGill Redmen (4-1) faced off against the Concordia Stingers (5-0) at Molson Stadium. Both teams entered the arena undefeated: Deadlocked in a tie for first place in the RSEQ and playing for sole possession of the top slot in the conference. McGill was slow to start, and their valiant second half effort was ultimately insufficient, falling to Concordia by a score of 22-15.

The Stingers opened up the game with a quick 12-0 lead. However, McGill battled back: Third-year hooker Alex Pantis wrangled a try for the Redmen, ending their dry spell. Throughout the half, tensions spilled out onto the field, resulting in penalties for both sides. Ultimately, the penalties cost McGill points, which came back to haunt the Redmen later in the game. The Stingers closed out the first half with a comfortable 19-5 lead.

After halftime, a determined McGill team took the field. First-year fly-half Owen Cumming and third-year flanker Pierre Grison helped drive McGill’s offence, each picking up a try in the half. The Redmen played phenomenal defence, too, giving up only six points to the Stingers in the final half. Despite their efforts, the Redmen couldn’t take advantage of the offensive and defensive surge, and the Stingers took home the victory by a 22-15 score.

“I thought we played very well in the second half,” Redmen Head Coach Ian Baillie said. “[We] took too many penalties. That cost us the game, but we moved the ball. We scored some really nice tries, and we looked good out there.”

McGill will be looking to bounce back from their loss in their upcoming game against the Sherbrooke Vert et Or (3-2) at Stade de L’Université in Sherbrooke on Oct. 28. This will be their last game of the season before the playoffs begin in November.

“We can use this game [against Sherbrooke] as a really good opportunity to come back from this game [against Concordia],” Pantis said.

Overall, the Redmen remain positive and are focused on their upcoming match and the playoffs.

“I think we’re going to go far,” Grison said. “We’re going to put in the work to achieve what we want to achieve, which is to win.”

Moment of the game

In the closing minutes of the game, the Redmen secured possession and Grison barrelled past defenders to ring in one last try for McGill.

Stat corner

McGill held Concordia to 22 points, Concordia’s lowest offensive total this season.

Quotable

“When we play our game, like we saw in the second half, it’s something else. We’ve just got to stick to our game.” – Fly-half Owen Cumming

Science & Technology

Bridging gender inequality one Wikipedia article at a time

by Angelina Giordano on

More in Science & Technology:

In honour of Ada Lovelace Day (ALD) on Oct. 9, people connected over their laptops to help close the gender gap on Wikipedia. ALD honours Ada Lovelace, a brilliant mathematician—often considered the world’s first computer programmer—as well as all women in the fields of science and technology.  

This year, the McGill library, in partnership with Broad Science, 500 Women Scientists Montreal, and the Science and Policy Exchange celebrated ALD by hosting Montreal’s first-ever Wikithon, an event where people can come together to learn about and edit Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia with content that users can freely contribute to. The website is an integral tool for many university students with over 40 million articles. Its cultural significance is evidenced by the fact that the easiest way to explain Wikipedia is via a Wikipedia article itself.

The ALD Wikithon enabled students to come together and edit pages to make the global encyclopedia more gender-equal, since over 90 per cent of the encyclopedia’s content is male-authored. The hope is that this will lead to more articles on female pioneers in STEM, such as Donna Strickland, who have comparatively fewer articles than their male counterparts.

“Donna Strickland, who won a Nobel prize [and was the] third woman in physics to win it, didn’t even have a Wikipedia page till last week,” Rackeb Tesfaye, the founder of the podcast Broad Science, said. “She was told that she wasn’t notable enough to be on Wikipedia.What notable means, not only on Wikipedia, but in our society, […] what we deem to be valuable and who [we deem] a scientist, definitely needs to be [redefined].”

When Wikithons first began in 2012, women only represented 15 per cent of all Wikipedia biographies; now, in 2018, that number has only increased to 17 per cent. In trying to boost these statistics, McGill’s Wikithon mirrored similar global events held throughout the week in honour of Ada Lovelace and female contributions to science.

“[It’s a] nice introduction to editing Wikipedia pages,” Mitaali Taskar, U2 Science, said.  “[I got to] look up incredible women I would not have known about otherwise.”

To edit Wikipedia, users must first create an account and a username. Coding is not required since the interface provides a text-based editing layout. The website gives users a user page to practice edits, and recommends that new users edit at least 10 articles so that Wikipedia can differentiate real users from bots.

While events like McGill’s Wikithon aim to introduce newcomers to Wikipedia’s editing process, many people see Wikipedia editing as much more than a hobby; almost all of the edits on Wikipedia are made by a select 1,500. Jess Wade, a well-known Wikipedia editor, has written over 270 articles dedicated to female scientists in the past year. Her goal is to ensure that all women who have made important contributions to science get the recognition they deserve.

“I kind of realized we can only really change things from the inside,” Wade said in an interview with The Guardian. “Wikipedia is a really great way to engage people in this mission because the more you read about these sensational women, the more you get motivated and inspired by their personal stories.”

Opportunities to change the article content of Wikipedia are available to everyone.

“It’s nice to know that you don’t have to be an expert [in] something to change the page,” Maryse Thomas, a PhD candidate in neuroscience, said. “You can just do research and feel confident enough in yourself to go ahead and make […] a major edit.”

Science & Technology

Putting your footprint in your mouth

by Caroline Lou on

More in Science & Technology:

In light of growing global concerns about oceanic pollution, Mathilde Jutras, a PhD student in McGill’s Earth and Planetary Sciences Department, produced a video proposing a solution to the continuously worsening ocean environment: Labelling consumer products with their carbon footprint. Jutras suggests that products should be labelled to indicate the carbon dioxide emissions from production and transport as well as colour-coded to indicate low, medium, or high levels of emissions.

Jutras entered her video in the Oceans Youth Innovation Challenge, which called for participants from each of the G7 countries to submit a solution to an ocean-related challenge that they were working to address. She was one of two winners of the challenge, both of whom were given the chance to attend the G7 Environment Ministers’ Meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia Sept. 19-21 this year. The other contest winner, Kaoru Yokono from Japan, proposed packaging-free areas in stores and the standardization of non-plastic packaging among retailers.

Jutras made her video entry out of a desire to make science more accessible in the fight against climate change and oceanic pollution.

“I realized the importance of science, especially in the communication between scientists and decision makers,” Jutras said. “I saw this opportunity and thought it would be a really good chance to see what the decision makers think, how [the decision making process] works, and how scientists can make their work useful to decision makers.”

Jutras found her time in Halifax to be an eye-opening experience. Although a large portion of the G7 meetings were closed, she attended several environmental outreach events and presentations during the coinciding Oceans Partnership Summit and Inspiration Expo.

“It was really interesting to attend the Oceans Partnership Summit on the first day and to see discussions with people from such different backgrounds […] trying to reach a consensus,” Jutras said.

Jutras noted the diversity of voices and the range of perspectives from which attendees approached climate change. She was pleased to see the variety of stakeholders present to take a multi-disciplinary approach to waste management, one of the leading causes of pollution.

“There are people who are all about technology, saying that we can [make] plastics that are 100% recyclable,” Jutras said. “But [someone else pointed out] ‘the problem is, in Southeast Asia, they have so much plastic being consumed and they don’t have the infrastructure to recycle. So even if industry does [make] recyclable plastic, it’s just going to go in the trash anyway, or directly into the rivers.’”

Even if producers want to help slow down climate change by doing the right thing, they face constraints.

“There are some companies that want to do stuff that’s better [for the environment], but they don’t have money and can’t get money from the banks to start a project,” Jutras said. “So [the man at the conference] was attacking [the problem from] the financial side [….] I thought that was really interesting and it inspired me.”

Although oceanic protection and the broader topic of climate change can seem daunting, local and national governments, industries, institutions, and individuals all have the power and responsibility to tackle these issues.

“One of the things I realized is that not a lot of people will make a major change, but everyone will make a small change,” Jutras said. “And, if everyone is trying to make a change, it will make a big impact.”

1 … 534 535 536 537 538 … 1,363

Read the latest issue

Read the latest issue