Latest News

a, Science & Technology

Anti-vaccination platforms risk disease re-emergence

by Prativa Baral on

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Over the past few years, there has been a massive cultural movement towards distrusting vaccinations. A Google search of “Vaccines are…” results in hits such as “Vaccines are bad,” “Vaccines are dangerous,” and “Vaccines are poison.” In fact, 20 per cent of Canadian websites and 70 per cent of American websites promote anti-vaccination platforms, according to a talk about vaccine wars by researcher Brian Wald.

The distrust in vaccines is largely attributed to a 1998 publication connecting the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR) to autism. The research was conducted by former British surgeon Andrew Wakefield and published in the journal The Lancet. While further investigation indicated that no link between the two has ever been proved, it took 12 years for the paper to be discredited and removed from the journal. By that point, the public had already become suspicious as to the effects of vaccines.

Celebrities, too, play a factor in this trend. American actress Jenny McCarthy is well known for her anti-vaccination platform, claiming, alongside Wakefield, that vaccines led to her son’s autism. Despite a gaping lack of scientific evidence, McCarthy’s celebrity status gave her the means to promote this anti-vaccination movement, albeit with poor scientific practice.

Unfortunately, this fear of vaccination has led to a re-emergence of diseases once easily managed with immunization. There have been reported outbreaks of whooping cough, measles, mumps, rubella, and polio  in the last year or so, in countries where these vaccines are readily available.

Eduardo L. Franco, Chair of the Department of Oncology and director of Cancer Epidemiology at McGill, is frustrated with today’s anti-vaccination lobbying. He explains that these myths are difficult to dispel, and are having a huge consequence not only on the public’s views of vaccinations, but also on the choices people make.

For instance, anti-vaccination groups have claimed that there is no proof that the HPV vaccine prevents cervical cancer. Franco questions this particular argument, stating that research suggests otherwise.

“The vaccine has high efficacy in preventing pre-cancerous lesions,” he said.“That’s enough proof [to indicate that the vaccine works]. What would you do? Wait until the cancer happens? What if we had done the same with polio in the 1940s?”

Franco refers to the polio epidemic that ravaged North America during the 1900s. In 1916, polio outbreaks resulted in 27, 000 cases in the United States with over 6,000 deaths. The disease and associated panic spread until it reached a climax during the 1940s and ‘50s. In 1952 alone, there were over 57,000 reported cases leaving about 21,000 victims paralyzed.

In response to this epidemic, the Salk vaccine came to the rescue, followed by the oral polio vaccine that led to an abrupt decline in cases post immunization. By 1961, only 161 cases were reported in the United States.

While it is important that the public is making more informed decisions about what is being injected into their bodies, this decision should be based on legitimate statistics, as opposed to Google searches. One solution could be disclosing a risk-to-benefit ratio of vaccines to educate the public about the strength of vaccinations.

To date, researchers are questioning the validity of the anti-vaccination debate. In one of his lectures in MIMM 387 Franco debated why we should even question something that has proved to save millions of lives in the past. If more and more people opt out of vaccinations, once-eradicated diseases could continue to make a stronger appearance—an appearance that may not be protected by the vaccines we currently have available.

a, Opinion

To vote or not to vote: a moral and logistical quandary

by Tim Logan on

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On Friday, Mathieu Vandal, head of the election revision board for a downtown Montreal riding, resigned over concerns that large numbers of non-francophones were registering to vote in the upcoming election without proper screening. At a press conference on Sunday, Parti Québécois (PQ) candidates accused “people from Ontario and the rest of Canada” of trying to “steal” the election. Amid these accusations were reports that McGill and Concordia students who appear to qualify as voters according to the minimum registration requirements are being disallowed from registering to vote. Later on Sunday, Québec’s chief electoral officer said there was no evidence of an “irregular increase in voter registration.”

Each time there is a provincial election in Quebec, there is a discussion on campus as to whether or not McGill students should vote in it. This election has raised a more heated discussion than usual, as a result of our widespread opposition to the PQ’s Charter of Values. Passions aside, there are two questions at work here: can we vote, and should we?

On the first question, there are certainly some of us that can—people originally from Québec, for example (though the specific riding in which they should vote is still at issue). For the rest of us, it is much less clear. There are three specific requirements for registration: Canadian citizenship, residence in Québec for at least six months, and intention to make Québec your principal residence. The first two are straightforward; the third is not and needs clarification.

This aside, the more interesting question is “Should we vote?” If you plan on living here permanently, you absolutely should. How about those of us that don’t?

The main argument I’ve heard in the past weeks for students voting regardless of long-term residency is keeping the PQ from a majority government. This isn’t a very good argument, if only because it is currently far from clear that the PQ will form a government at all. Polls are giving the Liberals an edge that varies from two per cent to double-digits.

Moreover, the ridings in downtown Montreal where students who weren’t already residents of Quebec tend to live are basically decided—two are solidly Liberal, two are PQ, and one is held by Quebec Solidaire. These ridings seem unlikely to change hands. Ultimately, whether the PQ forms a government will be decided in the 97 ridings outside the Liberal-dominated island of Montreal. Considering the vote distribution, student-voting won’t make a difference in the ability of the PQ to form a government.

You could also argue for students voting in order to increase the budget of their preferred party through Quebec’s per-vote subsidy of $1.50 (which increases to $2.50 in an election year). While this reasoning has some logical merit, in reality, the impact on any party would likely be fairly small because there are relatively few of us. In my mind, this makes moral considerations more important. Simply put, it is immoral for a person to vote if they will not have to deal with the consequences of that vote. Doing so is unfair to those who will.

We allow people the right to vote because we believe that people should be able to make decisions about the character and the quality of the society in which they live. If they reside in or are leaving to another, with no plans to return, they have no right to a say in this one.

If Quebec is your permanent residence, you should vote. If you are planning on making Quebec your permanent residence after you graduate, you should vote. If you are a first- or second-year student and you will be studying at McGill for the rest of your degree, you too should vote as you will be living here for several more years. But if, like me, you’re an upper-year student from elsewhere in Canada with a distaste for xenophobic populism, it’s not your choice to make.

a, Opinion

A Campus Conversation: anglophones in the Quebec election

on

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INTRODUCTION

(Ruidi Zhu / McGill Tribune)
As the race to the Quebec provincial election on April 7 intensifies, the role that students should play, especially those with a permanent residence outside the province, has become a defining issue in the campaign. Amid allegations of voter suppression against students with out of province residences, the ruling Parti Quebecois have claimed that there have been irregularities in voter registration among these students, claims swiftly debunked by the electoral office. With the issues at stake—the charter, university funding, and more, we convened several students and groups to ask: what should be the role of the anglophone student vote in the Quebec election?
THE CONVERSATION

Have your say… CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION

Post your thoughts in the comments section, or send an email to opinion (at) mcgilltribune (dot) com.
a, Editorial, Opinion

SSMU ‘outreach’ on building fee yet another abdication of duty

by McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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“Whereas, without this fee the SSMU would have to cut services to students in order to afford the rent and utilities payments to McGill”

This line, snugly hidden within one of the 11 questions posed by the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Winter  2014 referendum and jostling for voter attention, was probably read by a few of the two-thousand some students who voted against both parts of the “Implementation of the University Center Building Fee.” It’s doubtful that voters took it seriously.

The two-part question—which sought to institute a fee of $6.08 per semester and index said fee to a 5.6 per cent annual increase until 2021—was intended to raise the money needed to pay the increases in the newly negotiated lease with McGill for use of the SSMU building. It was also the only referendum question to fail. Judging by the thoughts expressed by various SSMU executives before and after the results were revealed, this question was the most important of those that were before the voters.

Funny that no one noticed.

The alleged necessity of this fee stems from the new lease terms that SSMU recently concluded negotiating with McGill. The new terms include an increase in the rent from $126,900 to $165,000 over 10 years, as well as charges for the utilities costs for the building—previously gratis—to the tune of $100,000 per year, subject to annual inflation-related increases. SSMU is also on the hook for the retroactive payment of the three years during which this agreement was being negotiated.

When looking at the terms in front of students now, it is dubious how well SSMU held on to any sort of negotiating position vis-a-vis McGill. What is clear is that SSMU, as it stands, does not have the money to pay these new rates without substantial changes to its budget. The global budget for this Fall was already close to a deficit, factoring in an estimate as to the increase in the building’s rent. When this newspaper endorsed the fee referendum, we did so expressing reservations, “as to the lack of concrete or even semi-tangible context as to how SSMU will re-allocate funds in the event of a “No” vote.”  It now seems that there was no plan at all.

Considering then, how necessary the new infusion of cash promised by the referendum was to the continued functioning of SSMU, there was a substantial lack of awareness generated on the subject. Outside of a few quotes scattered throughout student media pieces on the upcoming elections, there was no outreach from SSMU to students expressing the importance of this fee. There was no “Yes” committee, and thus, no social media outreach, no posters, and doubtless little organizing at the grassroots level. What makes the lack of effort here even more galling is that there seems to be a sense that the mess SSMU finds itself here is solely, or even mostly, the fault of the students. There certainly is something to be said for the contention that students can’t be bothered to care for student politics—even in the cases when it genuinely matters. However, there is also a certain level of chutzpah required to place a critical—and substantial—fee increase before students without explaining why they should care, then excoriating the irresponsibility  of these students (the people SSMU ostensibly represents) when they balk at an extra $12 per year charge.

Doubly disheartening is the fact that this fee referendum is not the first time this kind of negligence on the part of the SSMU executive has happened this year. Last Fall, the SSMU General Assembly (GA) was attended by a mere 50 students, not even meeting the already exceptionally low bar of 100 students for quorum. Under-attended GAs are part and parcel of McGill student politics, but even compared to that baseline, the SSMU executive put little effort into raising awareness of the forum, disregarding its own mandate. As we editorialized under a similar headline at the time, “The passivity demonstrated by the executive towards involving students in the political process is troubling [and] indicative of a disregard for the input of the membership at large.” The inability to meet quorum also left SSMU unable to appoint a Board of Directors (BoD) for this year, which rendered it unable to update its investment portfolio and put the renewal of its license to operate Gerts in jeopardy.

Lo and behold, a special GA was convened, and an actual effort at outreach was made. Quorum was reached and maintained, and SSMU had a BoD. The only problem: time and resources were wasted by not doing it right the first time.

How the SSMU manages to wriggle out of the corner it has painted itself into here remains to be seen. We can only hope that the incoming executives take into account the lessons of this situation; actually telling students why their votes matter before they happen would be a good start.

a, McGill, News

Anonymous grading sparks debate at Senate

by Erica Friesen on

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The possibility of anonymous exam grading gave rise to debate at Senate last Wednesday.

Discussion stemmed from a report by the Academic Policy Committee, which concluded that there should be no university-wide policy on anonymous evaluations.

Anonymous grading policies have been implemented at other universities worldwide and in McGill’s Faculty of Law. The primary intention is to combat potential biases against students based on personal information that allows the marker to identify the student, their race, or their gender.

According to Provost Anthony Masi, members of the committee did not deem such a policy appropriate for implementation at the university level because grading is under the jurisdiction of individual faculties.

“Suggestions were raised concerning how to deal with this in a manner that would not be too cumbersome,” he said. “We’re not willing to say this should become university policy through the normal mechanisms. Faculties have the right to do that if they so choose.”

Some senators, however, argued against the committee’s conclusions.

“The basis that we should leave this to the faculties to decide—I’m not sure that’s a good justification for not implementing a policy that affects assessment, because assessment is something that affects all students,” Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) Representative Jonathan Mooney said.

Masi argued that more evidence is needed before the committee can move forward with further recommendations.

“We have no evidence that there is bias in grading at McGill,” he said. “If we had that empirical information, it would be very helpful [.…] I will undertake a McGill study to demonstrate it.”

Other senators argued that McGill does not need a new study to move forward on the issue.

“There is data that shows this worldwide,” Cameron Butler, Macdonald Campus Students’ Society (MCSS) representative, said. “There are no reasons to consider that McGill is somehow outside of the realm of social injustice, [so] we can logically assume that these issues exist at McGill.”

Faculty of Arts representative  and Political Science professor Catherine Lu said providing faculty with potential strategies for avoiding bias would be a more effective solution.

“I’m not sure it’s going to really help to try to figure out empirically [through] a study at McGill whether there is bias,” she said. “We have to think of strategies that actually work given the way that we actually do things in our system.”

University priorities

Senate also critiqued and made suggestions for the university’s priorities following a presentation by Principal Suzanne Fortier on McGill’s proposed priorities for the future.

These include emphasizing research; improving the university’s partnerships with alumni and other universities; and maintaining and improving McGill’s physical and digital infrastructure.

Some senators questioned the value of these priorities, noting their lack of substantive, qualitative measures.

“A few things I’ve seen are a bit fluffy and ought to be more well-rounded in what exactly we hope to achieve,” Mooney said. “‘Position McGill research teams at the forefront of knowledge’—that sounds great, but what does it mean? And how are we going to measure that?”

According to Fortier, community approval of these values will lead to another round of consultation to create a concrete plan and to set targets and timelines for reporting on progress.

“We need to know first and foremost: can we at this point mobilize around these areas?” she said.

Other senators praised the document’s emphasis on improving academic advising, and stressed the importance of developing concrete results on this topic.

“Students have been very underrepresented in getting advising services,” Faculty of Arts Advisor Ruth Kuzaitis said. “In our particular faculty the ratio is 2,000 students to one advisor [.…] It’s very unfortunate to see students go through their university studies without ever encountering an advisor [to] help navigate a complex system.”

Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Ollivier Dyens assured senators that concrete steps for improving advising should be in action within the next year.

“We already are moving on some things—for example […] we’re building an advising checklist for incoming students,” he said. “We’re going to put an emphasis on pre-arrival advising or early advising so we avoid the bottleneck later on, [and] we’re developing a series of simulators for incoming students.”

a, Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey, Soccer, Sports

10 Things: Sports jargon

by Zikomo Smith on

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Sports have a weird and wonderful vocabulary of their own. In this edition of 10 Things, we aim to clarify some of the funkiest and most famous phrases in the world of sports. 

Baseball

1

CAN OF CORN— This refers to an easy-to-catch ball hit high into the outfield. There are two possible explanations for this phrase. The first is that nineteenth-century grocers would knock down cans from the highest shelves with a hook for an easy catch in their aprons. The other is that corn was the best selling vegetable, stocked on the lower shelves and thus the easiest canned good to ‘catch.’

2

CATBIRD SEAT­— This is an ideal situation for a batter during which the bases are loaded and there are no strikes nor outs to the batting sides’ name.  A catbird seeks out the highest point in a tree to sing, and the batter can likewise be seen to be on top of the world in these situations.

 

Football

3

HAIL MARY— The most iconic play in American Football is when a desperate quarterback throws the ball deep into the end zone in hopes of a game-changing touchdown late in the game. Roger Staubach of the Dallas Cowboys popularized the name in 1975. After a game-winning touchdown against the Minnesota Vikings he said, “I closed my eyes and said a ‘Hail Mary.’”

4

BUMP AND RUN— A defensive technique used by defensive backs who are trying to slow down receivers at the line of scrimmage. It’s designed to initiate contact with the receiver in order to throw him off of his intended running route. This is also a car-theft technique, where one robber draws a driver from the car so that an accomplice can drive off with it.

Basketball

5

TOSSING UP BRICKS—  Shooting the ball in such a manner that it clangs hard off the backboard. It is usually used as an insult to someone who is shooting poorly or has an unpleasant shooting motion. If a basketball player is continuing to miss shots, then he or she can be said to have laid enough bricks to build a house.

6

THE CHARITY STRIPE— Legendary sportscaster Chick Hearn coined the phrase ‘the charity stripe’ to denote the free-throw line in basketball. When players step up to the free throw line, there is no one from the opposing team actively trying to stop them from scoring. Hence, it is deemed that they are given a charitable opportunity to score the basketball.

Hockey

7

BUTTERFLY—  A goaltending technique where the goalie falls to his or her knees with legs splayed out and arms wide, like the wings of its insect namesake. This allows the goalie to maximize coverage of the net, and to stop the puck with any part of the body. It was pioneered by Glenn Hall, who played 14 nerve-wracking NHL seasons before finally putting on a goalie mask.

8

GORDIE HOWE HAT TRICK— Named after one of the all-time great hockey players, Gordie Howe, who won four Stanley Cup Championships and six Hart Trophies as MVP. Howe was known to be as tough as he was talented—fittingly, this feat involves scoring a goal, notching an assist and getting into a fight, all in the same game.

Soccer

9

PARKING THE BUS— This is when a team sets up all of its players in a defensive position in front of goal. Thus it is almost impossible for the opposition to score as the defenders take up so much space that it is as if they were a bus taking up parking spots.

10

GETTING BOOKED—  When a player receives either a yellow or red card for a particularly bad infraction. The former is a warning that can lead to a sending off, the latter is an immediate sending off. The referee then notes the foul down in his or her notebook, hence the phrase.

a, Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

FOKUS Film Festival gets hearts racing with robust reels

by Max Mehran on

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It was only fitting that to arrive on time last Friday to the FOKUS Film Festival, I had to re-enact one of the great last-minute dash scenes in movie history. The moment my class ended at 5:55 p.m., I was zooming through the Milton-Parc area doing my best Ferris Bueller impression, pushing myself to get to Cinema du Parc before the festival’s 6 p.m. start time. While no slow-motion trampolining was necessary, I succeeded and thankfully, had the benefit of soaking up the fantastic student-run event in its entirety.

FOKUS is hosted annually by the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) service Student Television at McGill (TVM), and serves to showcase the talent of up-and-coming filmmakers in the student community. This year’s installment featured 19 short films categorized as fiction, experimental, documentary, and TVM’s unique 72-hour competition films, all of which were judged for various prizes by both the audience and a panel of judges. The films were worthy of the big screen treatment, displaying strong creativity and a thorough commitment to the filmmaking process.

In the fiction category, I was seduced by J-G Debray’s Valentine’s Day, the story of an unfortunate date that unfolds in a light and amusing narrative style; while Ficol, by Alexandre Vinson, transported the room into a confused and tormented young man’s mind, punctuated by superimposed shots of alcohol and an empty apartment.

The experimental films blew me away. Glitch Walk by Ray Arzaga amazed the rest of the audience, who granted him the prize for the festival’s best film; Arzaga’s film also captured the best experimental film prize, which was determined by the judges. By using an editing of sound and image in harmony with a song, it unified four dancers merging into one. Luke Orlando and Cedric Yarish’s Far Too Awake, which received an honorable mention in the experimental category, relates with finesse the mental state of exhaustion, controlling the camera with full dexterity.

The documentaries were humble and professional. Sophia Loffreda’s Beta Orchestra looked at an emerging style of music-art that moulds together various computer-originated sounds into coherent melodies, while Julia Edelman’s Artscape narrated the story of a saxophonist by compiling a series of alluring shots to accompany the instrumental sounds.

During the intermission, I met with event organizer and U3 Arts student Chantal Africa. She described the process that TVM goes through to judge the 19 films that made it through to the festival out of over 40 applicants.

“We created different criteria for [the categories], but for most of them, cinematography, sound, and editing [were included],” says Africa. “For fiction, it was story and acting; for experimental, it was the ability to evoke feeling and emotion as well as acting; and for documentary, it was subject and presentation.”

The second half of the festival featured the 72-hour competition, a segment that challenges filmmakers to write, produce, film, edit, and turn in short films in under three days—while somehow incorporating the element of “heart beating.”

“It’s a tradition we are running,” explains Africa. “The idea of the secret element changes every year. We announced it at the very beginning of the competition, and we had a 72-hour committee come up with it.”

Taking both straightforward and poetically subtle approaches, the filmmakers incorporated the open-ended “heart beating” requirement in distinct and inventive ways. My personal favourite—which also took the judges’ prize for best 72-hour film—was Vanessa Combe’s Two Tall Blondes, which plunges its viewer into a childhood filled with sophomoric games, softly orchestrated by a calm heartbeat. I also enjoyed Yarish’s second entry in the festival, Bedrooms, an ingenious film that counts down the heartbeats before a young woman’s death.

From start to finish, the theatre was filled with steady amounts of laughter and applause, attesting to the success of a festival that kept the entertainment level high throughout. Every second counted, and my charge to the theatre proved to be well worth it.

Selections and winners from the 2014 FOKUS Film Festival can be viewed in their entirety at www.tvmcgill.com

a, News, PGSS

PGSS member takes CFS to court over disassociation referendum

by Cece Zhang on

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McGill graduate student Ge Sa has formally requested that the Quebec Superior Court order the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) to allow the Post-Graduate Students’ Society of McGill University (PGSS) to vote on leaving the CFS.

PGSS Councillor Sa appeared before the Court on March 18. The final decision on the case will be made after a two-day trial on Aug. 28 and 29.

This is the second attempt by PGSS to leave the CFS through a referendum. A previous attempt in 2010 was not recognized by the federation due to a disagreement about the length of the voting period. The case is also currently in court, as the CFS alleges that PGSS owes them approximately $270,000 in membership fees since the 2010 referendum.

On Oct. 11, Sa mailed a petition to the CFS with more than 2,000 signatures requesting permission to hold another referendum to leave the federation. A CFS representative acknowledged receiving  the petition on Oct. 29.

According to its bylaws, the CFS had 90 days to determine whether the petition was in order. When he did not receive a response in that timeframe, Sa filed court proceedings with the Quebec Superior Court to ensure that PGSS could schedule a referendum to leave the organization.

PGSS Secretary-General Jonathan Mooney explained that although there is no verdict currently, the trial in August is encouraging and leaves the possibility of a Fall referendum question.

“The judge offered dates for a trial to make a final decision over this summer,” Mooney said. “So the trial was fast-tracked—we’ll have a decision faster than it would be otherwise.”

This trial is part of a seven-year dispute between PGSS and the federation. Sa explained that PGSS cannot afford to wait for the final verdict on the previous case to disaffiliate, as the membership fees for the federation continue to accumulate by approximately $50,000 per semester.

“The [2010] litigation is ongoing, and will likely drag on for several more years,” Sa said. “Until that gets resolved, we have to set aside a certain amount every year as contingency funding. What I’m trying to do is to have a referendum without prejudice to the previous litigation, just to determine from this point onwards, whether PGSS is still a member of CFS through this referendum.”

In addition to the two court cases, PGSS is also working to lobby the government to expand the Act Respecting The Accreditation and Financing of Students’ Associations (ARAFSA) to include regulation of leaving student organizations. They have met with Quebec Higher Education Minister Pierre Duschesne, who has expressed interest in the case, as well as Liberal higher education critic Pierre Arcand, who recently sent a letter to Duschesne in their support.

“Right now [ARAFSA] gives student organizations the right to be recognized by universities, and the right to assemble and be recognized by universities,” PGSS Financial Affairs Officer Erik Larson said. “But it doesn’t provide any way to disaffiliate from federal organizations.”

According to Sa, the PGSS’ multiple approaches to disaffiliation mean there should be some movement regarding membership this year.

“No matter what the outcomes of the previous litigation may be, we’ll have a referendum to see if we will continue to be a member of the CFS in the Fall semester,” Sa said. “On the other hand, we will push to lobby the government to devise more appropriate and fair approaches to the ways that student organizations should be.”

a, Features

Incubating innovation: a university’s role in fostering social entrepreneurship

by Alessandra Hechanova on

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Canada’s social economy is replete with innovators inspired by a global consciousness that transforms oppression into opportunity. It is a sector that is neither publicly nor privately controlled and touts one of the fastest growth rates in the country.

According to Statistics Canada, non-profit industries contributed $35.6 billion to the national economy in 2007, exceeding the value added by the agricultural industry more than two-fold and that of the motor vehicle manufacturing industry several times over. Within the social economy, entrepreneurs are leveraging the market system to think critically for solutions to the world’s most pressing economic, environmental, and social problems.  Through critical interdisciplinary learning, niche mentorship, and networking opportunities, academic institutions like McGill are positioned to foster the talents of young innovators who inaugurate and add value to organizations within one of the fastest-growing sectors of the Canadian economy.

And much like a university cannot be represented by one feature, its methods for encouraging students to engage in the social economy can be seen at multiple levels of the institution.

Emulating empathy: a pedagogy of interdisciplinarity 

Industry Canada reported that 98 per cent of higher education institutions in the country offer at least one course in entrepreneurship; however, entrepreneurs surveyed by the 2013 Ernst & Young (EY) G20 Entrepreneurship Barometer were critical of Canada’s lack of coordinated support for entrepreneurship and weak mentorship opportunities. In 2012, the Desautels Faculty of Management began to institutionalize a pedagogy tailored to address this issue by launching MGPO 438, an undergraduate elective called “Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation.”

Anita Nowak, former integrating director of the faculty’s Social Economy Initiative (SEI) and professor of MGPO 438, noted how social entrepreneurship can invigorate new forms of academic instruction.

“It is a catalyst for different ways of teaching across the entire university system,” Nowak said. “Social innovation is about systems change. Any specific problem in one area has its tentacles in other issues, and systems-thinking addresses this holistically.”

Mentorship and outreach occupy a central place in the curriculum of Nowak’s popular course. The class features guest-speakers who serve as role models in the social economy.

The momentum of what Nowak coins the “social entrepreneurship zeitgeist” is establishing its foothold in the Faculty of Management, as the SEI plans to scale its efforts to offer related courses relevant to the social economy.

However, Nowak still sees room for improvement.

“There should be more opportunities that intentionally foster cross-border interdisciplinarity between management and other faculties,” Nowak said, emphasizing the ability of universities to magnetize and bring together the world’s brightest minds. “Every faculty on campus can contribute to social innovation. The convergence of different ways of problem-solving situates social entrepreneurship now in a great moment in time.”

Universities are often able to instigate important and informed conversations about specific social problems that can benefit from interdisciplinary dialogue and experiential learning. U3 International Management student Joanna Klimczak and McGill alumnus Mariana Botero worked tirelessly to pioneer the new Social Business and Social Enterprise Concentration within the faculty. They were both conscious of the advantage of interdisciplinary studies in the context of social innovation. This option allows Management students to integrate classes that focus on corporate social responsibility and social impact with those offered under the International Development Studies curriculum, in addition to other related courses outside the Faculty of Management.

As McGill moves forward, Klimczak hopes the new concentration will serve as fuel to energize a new generation of business leaders.

“It’s one thing to create an idea, and another to make it happen in a large institution with resource limits,” said Klimczak. “While certain management courses definitely [impart] skills for social entrepreneurship, this concentration will be a lot more encompassing.”

The university will thus be urged by students to temper its desire for innovation with the constraints of its structure as an administration.

“McGill is taking a step in the right direction, but its bureaucracy as an institution stifles innovation,” said Sean Reginio, U3 Arts, who completed Nowak’s course last Fall. “Procedures as simple as room-booking for meetings and venues on campus are difficult in an institution of McGill’s size.”

U3 Management student Nikita Pillai echoed this sentiment.

“McGill is a mecca for talent and skill,” Pillai said. “But, for as long as bureaucratic red tape exists, there will be inertia in academic innovation.”

Fostering confidence and competition

Through competitions and mentorship opportunities, universities can become micro-environments with the potential to address gaps in the public sector’s existing services supporting young entrepreneurs. According to Industry Canada, these shortcomings include unreliable access to start-up funds, long-term mentoring, and restrictions on a young entrepreneur’s eligibility for government assistance. HackMcGill and Computer Science Undergraduate Society’s (CSUS) McHacks—a 24-hour inter-university undergraduate hackathon—and the McGill Dobson Cup, a start-up competition, provide world-class mentorship opportunities from industry professionals and encourage inter-disciplinary solution-making.

“The Dobson cup could be the natural springboard for social enterprises to launch by gaining exposure to key impact investors,” Nowak said. “If [students] don’t have interface opportunities, innovation may never happen.”

Rewarding ingenuity through mentorship and thousands of dollars can make the formative difference in helping a young entrepreneur overcome significant barriers when starting a venture.

“I always knew that I had an interest in entrepreneurship, but it’s risky,” said U3 Arts Jessica Wang­—who won first prize at the Dobson Cup in its social enterprise track. She and with her partner Jassi Pannu co-founded Sanitru, a social enterprise dedicated to reducing the incidence of drug treatment errors.  “The social and financial support network gave me the confidence to pursue entrepreneurship.  If we hadn’t won the Dobson, I don’t know if I would have tried.”

More so than through pedagogy, the university steps up to its role as a true catalyst for social innovation by galvanizing networking opportunities outside of the classroom.

McGill regularly mobilizes its resources to sponsor summits and symposiums that give students exclusive opportunities to interface with high-profile leaders and social entrepreneurs at little to no cost. Within the past academic year alone, McGill welcomed Thomas Mulcair, Justin Trudeau, former vice-president of the United States Al Gore, and Elizabeth May. Mentorship often inspires a certain veneer of confidence in young innovators to consider a vocation in social entrepreneurship.

“I didn’t plan for [Nobel Peace Prize winner] Muhammad Yunus to come to Montreal […but] I approached him at a global leadership summit at McGill about [starting] an incubator and accelerator for young people,” said Klimczak, who is also the President and Co-founder of myVision, a student-run business that focuses on creating social business projects. “He told me to envision the world and how you live in it. Then you can create that world. That’s how myVision was born.”

The myVision initiative leverages education as the fulcrum to resolve local challenges within Montreal, providing university and high school students with an understanding of how social business projects can sustain palpable community-level change.

“Social business was a way for me to personally integrate my life, career, and care for community,” Klimczak said.

Opportunity within the campus network

A major advantage of a campus environment is the wide array of clubs and organizations as well as internships offered to university students.

Internship programs facilitated through individual faculties at McGill also foster a social ecology that makes academic development come alive through praxis. New to Desautels is the SEI impact internship program which partners students with Montreal-based non-profit organizations engaged in social finance and fostering social innovation such as the Jeanne Sauvé Foundation and Artistri Sud.

“The network I have moving forward is way bigger than it ever would have been if I had never [attended] university,” admitted Reginio, who completed an SEI impact internship during its pilot year in 2013. “The intuition you gain about how to lead and manage the human dynamics of a team is from practice with real experience—everything [outside] the classroom. Through niche opportunities and experiences [facilitated by] McGill, I became comfortable with the idea of entrepreneurship as a potential career.”

The number of possibilities for student engagement in McGill’s hundreds of clubs and services has the potential to impart crucial skills that can add significant value for would-be entrepreneurs.

“A general skill-set derives from an executive position […] in extracurricular leadership,” said Pillai, who is also the former vice president external of McGill Women in Leadership.  “Student organizations tend to have specific mandates, and students learn to tailor their communications and sell their ideas in accordance with that mandate.”

McGill’s robust approach to social innovation is supported by a campus-wide ethos supporting of community engagement. This operates on several scales through outward-oriented initiatives such as the Social Equity and Diversity Education (SEDE) office’s Community Engagement day and faculty-level working groups such as the Arts Community Engagement Committee. The university is able to further encourage critical thinking about social initiatives through inward-oriented social financing opportunities such as the McGill Sustainability Projects Fund and through the dozens of charitable organizations, leadership accelerators, and social activism groups that are financed by the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU).

The university-wide commitment to community engagement also helps to form networks that indirectly nurture the seedlings of students’ visions of social change into concrete projects.

Saba Balvardi, U2 Science, arrived at McGill from a small village in Iran with an initiative to address the pediatric health concerns of underserved communities in the southern province of her country, but lacked the network to do so. Meeting likeminded students with similar interests and complementary skillsets through the Muslim Students’ Association enabled Balvardi to start Project Hiva, a student-run initiative that translates and produces culturally-sensitive illustrations for Canadian Paediatric Society health education brochures issued initially in English.

“Joining different groups at McGill helped make Project Hiva possible,” Balvardi said.

The confluence of McGill’s resources  provide long-term opportunities for students with visions that look beyond business and more towards a more equitable social economy.

Prospects for progress 

Within McGill, innovators can look forward to myVision McGill’s social business summit on March 28, anticipated as the largest of its kind to ever take place at the university. The summit invites social entrepreneurs to facilitate social business workshops, culminating in the launch of the myVision internship database and a virtual address delivered from Yunus himself.

Social innovation is not just the flavour of the month, but the refrain of our generation. As the social economy becomes an increasingly attractive entry-point into the workforce, Nowak advised that students not ask, but demand that courses and observable institutionalized support for social innovation across all levels of the university be made available and accessible to students.

“What is required is a concerted effort across a critical mass of students,” Nowak said.

She encouraged students to reframe the parameters of their expectations for the future.

“University is the best time of your life [to consider social entrepreneurship] because you are unburdened by major responsibilities,” Nowak said.  “When people are in alignment with what they’re meant to be doing, coincidences and doors open up and allow that energy to flourish.”

a, Arts & Entertainment

Pop Rhetoric: You can’t handle the truth—unless it’s handled properly

by Wyatt Fine-Gagné on

More in a:

The first time I listened through Benji, the latest offering from Sun Kil Moon, I was wandering around Macdonald Campus trying to find a place to get a coffee. I’d finally figured out where I could buy one when the sweet organ at the beginning of “Jim Wise” came on. The song tells the story of a man on house arrest for mercy-killing his terminally ill wife, but then is unable to successfully end his own life while at her bedside in a hospital. The story engrossed me, and by its end, I found myself in a hallway I didn’t recognize, unsure of how I got there, and still without a cup of coffee in my hands.

Benji has been well received for the most part by critics and listeners, drawing praise for its lyricism above all else. It is quite literal, with singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek describing actual events from his life in a straightforward fashion, recounting specific stories without the use of metaphors or other figures of speech. This type of songwriting often leads to lyrics that are cumbersome and awkward; however, when done well, it tends to produce incredibly poignant and touching music.

Lyrics that hide most of their meaning below the surface are not inherently better or worse than the kind that Kozelek puts forth on Benji—they’re simply different. When the “verbal obfuscation,” as Ian Cohen of Pitchfork calls the former style, is wiped away, you’re left to deal with your own emotion. Instead of forcing you to dig into the lyrics, these songs make you dig into your own self, looking inward rather than outward for meaning or significance. The visceral quality of this well-executed lyricism has the ability to provoke ephemeral moments of intense listener engagement—as it did for me on Macdonald campus—and holds true across all genres, not just folk rock.

One of the best rap albums in recent memory uses this formula extraordinarily well. Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, M.A.A.D. city is a concept album that takes you inside his upbringing in Compton, a world where family and faith act as last lines of defence against gang violence and crime. The album’s meaning is grounded in characters and stories, not hidden behind clever wordplay, which gives added significance to the lessons and ideas that it preaches.

Another example is “Stan,” Eminem’s disturbingly vivid narrative about an imbalanced fan who communicates with the rapper through a series of letters that go unanswered—until it’s too late. Though not explicitly autobiographical, “Stan” takes the same lyrical approach as Kozelek and Lamar, and it is widely viewed as one of his best songs.

It’s hard to pinpoint examples in mainstream music where this style flat out doesn’t work. Simply put, the songs that fall short of capturing something special are likely tabled, rather than pushed by producers and labels. Even though so few unimpressive songs get released, sometimes it happens. On Benji, “Dogs” stands out as one of the lowlights, as Kozelek messily recounts past sexual experiences, but fails to find any truths about the difference between love and sex.

The Weakerthans have a catalogue filled with interesting characters and songs such as “Our Retired Explorer (Dines with Michel Foucault in Paris, 1961)”—its premise exactly what its title describes—are quite clever, but don’t manage to venture far beyond that. Stories like these function well enough in songs that disguise their meaning, but in order to succeed in the style discussed here, you need to find tales in which listeners can see themselves.

As “Stan” shows, the narratives don’t necessarily need to be true either. Sufjan Stevens is quite good at writing songs that feel more like stories, the best of which might be “Casimir Pulaski Day.” Stevens sings about a lover whose significant other is diagnosed with cancer and later passes away. It is beautiful, devastating, and entirely made up, but the fact that it is fiction doesn’t make it any less impactful. When the song is over, you’re left with a stinging feeling of loss, forced to confront some of the sadness in your own life.

On Benji’s opener “Carissa,” Kozelek sings about trying to “find some poetry [….] to find a deeper meaning/In this senseless tragedy.” But rather than a string of his own thoughts on death or loss, Kozelek tells a story and allows the audience to decide why it matters. We tend to prefer romanticised versions of our own everyday life in much of the content we consume. Though on the surface it may seem as if there is no “poetry” in our lives, it’s there; and songs like these allow us to see it.

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