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a, Science & Technology, Student Research

Concrete canoe design team unsinkable

by Caity Hui on

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The Kraken lurked next to the Engineering Café for the first few months of the school year, unbeknownst to most students. Created by McGill’s concrete canoe design team, the Kraken competed last May at the Canadian Concrete Canoe Competition (CNCCC). The competition started in 1995 and aims to allow university students to gain design experience in a non-academic environment.

According to Steven Cerri, co-captain of McGill’s concrete canoe team, over 200 teams and 3,000 students have competed since the start of the Canadian competition. “Every year, thousands of spectators come to watch as students demonstrate the research, design, testing, and leadership skills that they have gained from the building of their concrete canoes,” he said.

The team consists of 70 undergraduate students, most of whom  study Civil Engineering, although there are also students present from other Engineering programs, as well as from the Faculties of Science and Education. The team is responsible for designing, building, and casting a canoe completely out of concrete that is buoyant. To succeed, students must create an effective concrete mix, design a canoe shape, and build a mould.

Cerri admits that he has often been asked why anyone would want to build a boat out of concrete. Heavy, brittle, and weak in tension—concrete is not a conventional boat-building material.

“So why do we do it?” Cerri said. “To use the world’s most common building material in an unconventional sense? Perhaps. For the design challenge? Maybe. The way I see it, the concrete canoe team is much more than these challenges, and [this is] more than simply building a boat. The team is a way for young engineers to tackle problems, be innovative, build friendships, and teach each other. These qualities will be indispensable once the students become practicing engineers

The competition is divided into four events: the design paper, the oral presentations, the final product, and the races—each of which are worth equal points. Races consist of male and female endurance and sprint races, but they also include a final co-ed race.

Last year, the team competed for the first time since 2009. They look forward to competing again this spring with more experience under their belt—this time hoping to make the podium.

“The team is [currently] in the development and testing phase of the year,” Cerri said. “We are experimenting with new innovative materials in our mix design, and are making about 25 new mix designs a week.”

According to Cerri, the team is composed of six different sub-teams that focus on different tasks requiring different skill sets. These include the mixing, construction, aesthetics, design and analysis, and sponsorship and procurement groups.

In addition to working on creating a successful concrete mix, the construction team is in the process of building a quarter scale mould, which will allow the team to test and prove new design ideas before implementing them on the full-scale canoe.

“The design and structural analysis team has created over 25 prototype shapes for the canoe and now are developing a mathematical formula which rates the performance of a canoe based on certain geometric parameters of the boats shape,” Cerri added.

Cerri, and his co-captain Joseph Yazbeck decided to start up the team to fill a void in Civil Engineering at McGill.

“The other Engineering department had multiple design teams but nothing that involved Civil Engineering,” Cerri explained, “So it was an easy decision be a part of this new team that gives Civil Engineering an opportunity to have a design team oriented towards it. The concrete canoe team led the path, and now, there are three Civil Engineering oriented design teams including Concrete Canoe. But really, what could be cooler than a boat made of floating concrete?”

While many of the sub-teams are not accepting new members at this time of the year since they are too deep into their work, the construction and aesthetics team are still open to new members.

Students are encouraged to contact [email protected] for more information.

a, Science & Technology

Ask Scitech

by Tho-Alfakar Al-Aubodah on

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With cold and flu season upon us, we all remember the saying, “Don’t go out in the cold or you’ll catch your death.” However, this phrase is a widespread misconception.

According to Thomas Tallman, doctor of osteopathic medicine and emergency medicine physician at Cleveland Clinic in an interview with WebMD, there is no correlation between cold weather and catching a cold.Tallman explained that even though some people believe that hot, dry air makes the mucous in your lungs dry up—increasing your susceptibility to catching the cold—humidity is irrelevant to getting sick.

This myth originated from the ‘symptoms’ shared when one is cold and when one has a cold. A person in cold weather tends to feel dryness in the nose, throat, and could develop a cough.

Likewise, the common cold is an upper respiratory tract infection caused by over 200 viruses—the most common of which is the rhinovirus. Symptoms of the cold include coughing, sneezing and a sore throat—similar to what happens when you’re stuck in the cold for a long time.

Rhinovirus stimulates an inflammatory immune response, resulting in symptoms after as little as 20 hours. Usually, this inflammatory response is sufficient to eliminate the infection after  a week, on average.

Some wonder whether a compromised immune system is what gives you a cold. One of the biggest misconceptions associated with cold and flu is the belief that a stronger immune system makes you impervious to these germs.

“You can be as healthy as an ox and still get a cold,” Tallman said. In other words, the cold and flu don’t only affect immunocompromised patients.

So how does one cure the common cold? You can’t. There is no cure.

“There’s nothing you can do but wait it out,” Tallman says. Several medications are available to relieve symptoms, and garlic juice, lemon juice, ginger, and tea with honey are also great methods to reduce coughing.

Quite simply, washing your hands is the best method of prevention from catching the common cold.

The flu, however, is another story. While it’s possible to develop cold-like symptoms for a day, these symptoms do not compare to the fever, muscle soreness, or nausea commonly associated with the flu. The influenza vaccination is particularly recommended for immunocompromised patients—those with asthma, chronic lung disease, the elderly, or pregnant women—as they are all at high risk of developing pneumonia during the flu.

Furthermore, Tallman explains that while some people take vitamin C and zinc to prevent coming down with the flu, there isn’t enough evidence to strongly support this claim. Some studies are available, however, that show these measures shorten symptoms.

As far as treatment goes, Tallman warns cold and flu patients to avoid antibiotics.These products are used to treat bacterial infections—not viral infections—meaning they will cause more harm if used improperly. In fact, unnecessary use of antibiotics is one of the leading causes of a growing problem of antibiotic resistance among microbes,  and the proliferation of ‘superbugs.’

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends the use of antiviral medications as early as possible upon the sign of flu symptoms—they are most effective when taken within the first 48 hours.

The CDC also recommends the use of oseltamivir and zanamivir—both are neuraminidase inhibitors that minimize the duration and severity of symptoms associated with the flu.

In the end, these widespread cold and flu misconceptions have become almost culturally transmitted from generation to generation. To set the record straight, although you might not enjoy it too much, braving that cold air won’t necessarily land you home on the bed for a week.

a, News

PGSS seeks to withdraw from Canadian Federation of Students

by Jannet Li and Emma Windfeld on

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Canadian Federation of Students legal case

Graduate students at McGill are seeking once more to leave the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS).

On Nov. 6, the Post-Graduate Students’ Society of McGill University (PGSS) heard from a group of graduate students who have started a petition to withdraw from the national student association.

“Individual PGSS members […] have mobilized to demonstrate to CFS once more that the members of PGSS do not want to stay within CFS,” PGSS Secretary-General Jonathan Mooney said. “We support this effort to get CFS to recognize that PGSS is no longer a member.”

PGSS Councillors Ge Sa and Matthew Bouchard, two organizers behind the petition, started the petition to leave CFS because they said it lacks transparency and because PGSS’s interests are already represented on a provincial level by the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ).

“As a member of PGSS, I do not believe our membership to CFS is a trustworthy, efficient, nor productive relationship,” Bouchard said. “There are certain things that you can lobby for on a federal level, but we’re already affiliated with other organizations on a federal level that would lobby in our defence, like […] the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities.”

Sa also cited financial reasons behind their desire to leave.

“[CFS] never publish their budget […] so we have absolutely no idea how they operate, how they use our money,” Sa said.

PGSS, which has been a CFS member since 1993, has attempted to leave the organization before. On Oct. 19, 2009, members submitted a petition to CFS asking to hold a referendum to leave, also citing issues regarding CFS’s transparency. Although PGSS’s petition acquired the mandatory number of signatures required to hold a referendum, CFS did not set the dates for the referendum within the required 90-day-period.

Consequently, PGSS filed court proceedings to ensure that the referendum would take place. One day before the court hearing was set to take place, CFS set the referendum period to take place Mar. 31 to Apr. 1, 2010. Eighty-six per cent of the 869 PGSS members who voted were in favour of leaving CFS at that time.

“CFS has consistently refused to recognize the results of this referendum and the matter is currently before the courts, with PGSS seeking a declaration that it is no longer a member of the CFS,” PGSS’ executive summary of the case reads.

The new petition aims for CFS to recognize that PGSS members have considered themselves to not belong to CFS since the 2010 referendum.

According to Mooney, PGSS is prepared to pay any necessary court fees through their Special Projects Fund and a Contingency Fund, although these funds were not created with the purpose of paying CFS-related costs.

Since the first unsuccessful attempt to leave in 2010, PGSS has not paid CFS fees but has continued collecting an equivalent fee from students to hold in the Special Projects Fund.

“CFS sends the PGSS letters claiming we continue to owe them dues even after PGSS members voted to leave in 2010,” Mooney said. “All told, we estimate their claim to amount to around $400,000 over the years.  Although we are very confident in our legal case, to be responsible we have to plan for every scenario.”

If PGSS wins the legal case, Mooney said the accumulated Special Projects Fund could instead be used to construct a daycare or to modernize Thomson House.

 

Association of Postdoctoral Fellows to receive grant

A motion passed at Wednesday’s Council meeting will allocate a grant of $1,500 to the Association of Postdoctoral Fellows (APF).

“The APF is a semi-autonomous association which frequently organizes events and activities targeted at and responding to the needs of postdoctoral fellows at McGill,” the motion reads.

Mooney said the motion would facilitate the allocation of funds for events and activities targeted towards postdoctoral fellows.

“Currently, the APF has no budget and must apply for a grant each time from the executive committee of the PGSS for every activity and event they wish to plan,” Mooney said.

According to the motion, the grant will create a better situation for postdoctoral fellows since neither PGSS nor McGill can fully accommodate their needs.

“Postdoctoral fellows have specific needs and problems which neither the PGSS nor McGill is fully capable of responding to,” the motion reads.

a, News

Principal Fortier, panellists talk student involvement in QI

by Sara Cullen on

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Opportunities for student engagement in the Quartier de l’Innovation (QI) development project were a topic of a Nov. 6 webcast that allowed professors, alumni, and students to pose questions to a panel of experts on the project.

Launched in May 2013, the QI is an initiative that aims to turn Griffintown, a Montreal neighborhood, into a hub of research and innovation. Panellists at the event included McGill Principal Suzanne Fortier and three other representatives from École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) and McGill.

McGill Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations) Rose Goldstein said students have contributed to the QI from its beginning and will continue to be an important factor in the development of the project. For example, last month’s Community Engagement Day events included activities to inform students about the QI project and the Griffintown neighbourhood.

According to Goldstein, certain QI projects will offer more opportunities for student engagement—for example, the Montreal Creativity Hub facilitates meetings between professionals, companies, and professors with a focus on generating innovative ideas and management strategies.

However, some students questioned the ability for them to become involved in QI due to travel limitations. Justin Leung, a McGill student, drew attention to the physical distance between the QI and the university.

“What different strategies, procedures, or different projects will McGill be undertaking in order bridge that gap?” Leung asked.

According to Fortier, the distance between the campuses is not necessarily a disadvantage.

“The challenge is because we’re not quite in an environment that is totally familiar to us,” Fortier said. “That distance from the McGill campus to the QI in fact can be a real opportunity, a real advantage, because we are going to get out of our campus and into this quartier [….] We want to offer our students this opportunity to learn outside of campus.”

As part of its initiative to promote creative solutions, the QI has already brought artists from the Montreal community together with small businesses and students to contribute to its goal to infuse the arts and creativity into all sectors of the project.

“Students are already involved and this is a platform where anyone can come­—including students—to use creativity tools to solve problems,” Goldstein said.

Goldstein also spoke on a project named the Centre for Culture and the Arts, which is led by Will Straw, an art history professor at McGill. According to Goldstein, the project aims to bring artists together with other artists, students, and creative small businesses, to develop creative solutions to issues businesses may face.

“So they’ll be looking at kind of a creativity hub—an urban culture hub where artists will also come together with other actors in the area to problem solve and to work with our students,” Goldstein said.

Fortier said the QI will be integrated into student life and academic curricula by implementing it as a learning platform.

“There will be a whole spectrum of activities, from research projects to bringing what students learn in the classroom into practice in the QI,” Fortier said. “Let’s make it as dynamic as possible.”

a, Arts & Entertainment, Music

Cowboy Junkies – The Kennedy Suite

by Kia Pouliot on

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The Kennedy Suite, an All-Canadian collaborative album written by Scott Garbe and produced and arranged by the Cowboy Junkies (Margo Timmins, Michael Timmins, Peter Timmins, and Alan Anton), as well as Andy Maize and Josh Finlayson of Skydiggers, is an ambitious song cycle centred around the assassination of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy. It chronicles the tragedy through the personal narratives of a number of interconnected characters all somehow implicated in the event through a combination of songs, excerpts of recorded news, and speech clips from the incident.

As the time-frame (in relation to the assassination) and the emotional tone of the songs shift throughout the album, so too does the musical style. Harlan Pepper’s “Secret Spy Decoder Ring” is a cheeky upbeat rock song told from the perspective of a young boy who accidentally witnesses Lee Harvey Oswald preparing his assassination rifle, but who is not taken seriously when he tries to tell authorities. “Disintegrating,” the only track featuring Margo Timmins’ iconic sleepy voice at the fore, is narrated as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, post-assassination, and takes on the Cowboy Junkies’ usual hauntingly beautiful tone. When the Skydiggers sing “every girl and boy can grow up to be the President/ Or grow up to be the President’s killer,” in the folk-rock ballad “The Truth About Us (The Ballad of Lee and Marina),” the mixed sense of hope and hopelessness is reflective of the album’s overall message.

The resulting effect is a diverse musical range, masterfully woven together throughout the narrative. In the album’s epilogue, Sarah Harmer sings with tender vitriol “World won’t change if he don’t look/ He’s got his hand over his heart/ And his head stuck up his hole;” we are forced to wonder if these words are not even more relevant to today’s population than they were in 1963.

 

a, Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

Blue is the Warmest Colour: more than just a blue film

by Frances Lash on

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Blue is the Warmest Colour has attracted a lot of critical attention. This could stem from its accolades at Cannes this summer for its seven-minute long sex scene. What I found interesting were the comments that arose from the portrayal of the women in the film.

Manohla Dargis, writing in The New York Times, takes issue with the film because of its ìpatriarchal anxieties about sex, female appetite and maternity that leach into its sights and sounds and the way it frames, with scrutinizing closeness, the female body.î This conclusion, however, misses the complexities of the other social and political anxieties in the film, such as class conflict, relationships, and true happiness. Blue, or its original French title La Vie díAdele: Chapitres 1 & 2óis the story of a womanís life through love, food, and sex. The film takes you from 15-year-old Adeleís romance with Emma, an older art student, to Adele becoming a schoolteacher and finally, to the end of her long-standing relationship with Emma.

Director Abdellatif Kechiche focuses on Adeleís body throughout the film, especially her mouth. Adeleís mouth, ever open and ready to consume, is constantly in frameódemonstrating her characterís ìvoraciousness,î as Emma says. Adeleís openness, and the closeness of the camera, imply that Kechiche is going deep under the protagonistís skin to explore her by physically placing the viewer in a position to do so. The focus on Adele is intense and constant, and it achieves its purposeóto condition the viewer to Adeleís experience.

Dargis mentions the amount of time that Adele’s ìderriereî was shot, alone and center on the screen. I counted three times within the first 20 minutes of the film. Undoubtedly Adele’s rear end gets a lot of attention, but what does this mean? Dargis uses the attention given to Adele’s rear-end to cement her argument on the patriarchal representation of women in this film. I think the film points us elsewhere.

The most obvious source of tension in the film, besides the patriarchal one that Dargis discusses, is the difference in class between Adele and Emma. The two scenes of the women meeting each others parents mirror their discomfort. Emma’s family reflects her more cultured inclinations they eat oysters and question Adele’s desire to be a teacher because of the job’s economic security. Adele’s parents similarly question Emma about her art, wondering what she will do to make money with such a career, while they eat a simple pasta dish. Kechiche’s focus on the food they served framing the actresses’ faces as they eat is another way for him to show the conflicting reality of their social positions.

What does this have to do with Adeleís backside? Kechicheís focus on the female body from a distance, in scenes such as where Adele is sauntering down a hill towards her bus stop, is an objectification of her body, but perhaps not a solely patriarchal objectification. Adeleís face is constantly framed on the screen in a way that makes you feel as if you could delve deep into her mind. Pairing this with her bodyóopenly and without obstructionógives a full image of Adele: body and soul. What could be called a superfluous exhibition of Adeleís body is rather a purposeful display of her own anxieties about her lifestyle, her appetite, and her body image.

Blue depicts an internal struggle of living and loving. The film loses its impact when one focuses solely on the film’s images of the beautiful women in it. As a viewer it is a struggle in itself to watch Blue, with its constant focus on Adele pushing us to empathize with her unique life. That’s what makes it so relevant–struggle just as Adele does, trying to wrap our heads around what is happening around us.

a, Opinion

Owning the medium: media consolidation in Canada

by Tim Logan on

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Canada has the most concentrated media ownership of any liberal democracy in the world—more concentrated than America’s, or even Britain and its Murdoch empire. In 1999, our five largest newspaper chains accounted for 93 per cent of all daily circulation. Today the number is 82 per cent—lower, but still very high.

Just how pervasive is this concentration? In print, Postmedia (formerly CanWest) controls 31 per cent of total newspaper circulation, while Quebecor takes up 23 per cent, and holds 27 of Ontario’s 38 daily newspapers. Also involved in telecom, Quebecor has dominated the market in Quebec since buying Vidéotron in 2000.

Bell sold its common share in the Globe and Mail in 2010, but acquired the CTV network in the same deal. It grew even larger this past July when it bought Astral Media for  nearly $4 billion. Rogers, the largest communications company in Canada, has diverse interests from wireless service to Maclean’s and other magazines. Shaw bought the broadcasting arm of CanWest in 2010, and now operates Global TV in addition to its distribution infrastructure.

The biggest casualty of centralization is editorial independence. In 2001, CanWest, owned by the Asper family, ordered all its papers to publish editorials written at its Winnipeg headquarters. This led to a byline strike at the Montreal Gazette, in which reporters refused to allow their names to appear in print. This ended when the reporters were threatened with termination. In 2002, an Halifax Daily News editor resigned due to interference from CanWest headquarters. That summer, Russell Mills, veteran publisher of the Ottawa Citizen, was fired after running an editorial calling for the resignation of Jean Chrétien, an old friend of Israel Asper. In 2003, the Globe and Mail reported on a leaked CanWest memo that laid out plans for a centralized news desk in Winnipeg—they called it “this country’s most aggressive attempt to centralize editorial operations across a newspaper chain.” But not even the clearest violation of journalistic independence in contemporary Canadian history would lead to more regulation. The 2006 election brought Stephen Harper to power—his heritage minister,  responsible for media regulation, was a former CanWest executive named Bev Oda.

The Citizen debacle was a big missed opportunity. Political appetite to even discuss media regulation is seldom present, because controversies like the Asper disaster rarely happen. Given the firestorm that ensued, similar realizations will only be rarer in the future. However, editorial control still happens—it has just taken on subtler, more insidious forms. Executives have moved from overt statements of editorial policy to indirect control through hiring, firing, and promotion. Stories that go against policy are no longer pulled, but are ‘slanted’ through omission and preferential placement. The result is what academics call social control, where a journalist’s perks and career chances depend on writing to the company line. Ultimately, this leads to self-censorship and avoiding stories contrary to corporate interests.

Why is this a problem? Across the country, corporate media gives ‘free rides’ to those it likes, and no ride at all to those it doesn’t. In New Brunswick, for example, the Irving family holds all of the English-language daily newspapers. Like most media families, the Irvings have other large interests—they own, among other things, the largest oil refinery in Canada, forestry operations, and a frozen foods company. Their papers are known for failing to report on the sometimes-questionable activities of their sister companies.

On the West coast, look at the example of former BC premier Gordon Campbell. In January 2003, when Campbell, Premier at the time,  was caught driving with a blood alcohol content more than double the legal limit while vacationing in Hawaii. In confidence, a Vancouver Sun reporter called Campbell’s grinning, rosy-cheeked mugshot the scoop of the year—but the Vancouver Sun, known for running massive headshots, ran a tiny thumbnail. Later that year, when the provincial NDP released its environmental policy, only one paper carried the story, and even then it was buried in the middle. All of these papers were owned by CanWest at the time.

So, is editorial independence likely with media concentration? Absolutely not. As the 1981 Kent Commission on newspaper ownership wrote, “For the heads of such organizations to justify their positions by appealing to the freedom of the press is offensive to intellectual honesty.”

The only body with the power to restore the freedom of the press is the federal government. After a Royal Commission and two Senate investigations, we know the problem and the solutions. The Harper government must act before our media—and our democracy—slip further towards oligarchy.

a, Arts & Entertainment

A supernatural force in the natural world

by Remi Lu on

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The Orenda, Joseph Boyden’s long-anticipated book on the 17th century indigenous peoples of Canada, is a sweeping epic that deals with the birth of a nation—a time when Jesuit missionaries arrived on the shores of Canada. This novel succeeds not in its strength of device but rather, its impact in altering the landscape of understanding of indigenous culture through its accessibility and connection to mainstream audiences.

The Orenda tackles the dynamics of the shifting relationship between the Huron (Wendat) and Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) peoples as settlers from Europe began to arrive in droves of missionary and trading groups. Boyden weaves the cultural history of the Huron into the narrative, using the community as an anchor for the novel’s conflicts. Missionaries arrive from Europe to spread Christianity into the lives of the natives—an ideal that is foreign to the native concept of the “orenda,” the life force that, according to the Hurons, belongs to everything that exists in the natural world.

The traders bring with them technology, most notably the musket that topples the balance of power and destroys the symbiosis between different tribes. Both missionaries and traders also carry diseases that wipe out entire longhouses and villages. Arguing that the book deals with the loss of identity is a gross understatement; The Orenda is about the devastation of a culture.

The narrative is revealed through the eyes of three characters: Bird, a war leader in the Huron community; Snow Falls, a fiery young Iroquois girl adopted by Bird; and Christophe, a French missionary who lives among the Huron. It is clear that Boyden attempts to draw a net of similarities around the three characters despite their clashing roles within the conflict; the voices of the protagonists blur between chapters, often leaving the reader struggling to identify the point of view behind the passage. Contrary to expectation, this achieves a rare feat in literature, as the book manages to maintain a gap that separates the known from the expected. The readers are kept off-balance enough that they stumble into a run to devour and make sense of the story.

And yet, despite his success in establishing multivocality,  the depth of Boyden’s characters is superficial at best. We are first introduced to Bird and follow the warrior through his grief at the loss of his family and culture. Snow Falls’ wild and unpredictable nature shines in her battle for identity, while the intentions of Christophe Crow, a name the Huron people refer to the missionary by for his black robe and tendency to swoop in on dying natives, are delivered through his journals of religious reflection. These emotions and desires are portrayed with the subtlety of a blunt club. It feels like Boyden uses his characters grudgingly as a necessary vessel for his story, thus missing the chance to provide nuanced accents to an otherwise spectacular narrative.

Boyden writes The Orenda in a lyrical and rhythmic prose, signature to the style of his highly acclaimed Three Day Road and the Giller Prize-winning Through Black Spruce. The book dazzles in the breathtaking landscape of the beautiful Georgian Bay region, drawing upon the scope of Boyden’s own childhood experiences in visiting his Anishinabe mother’s relatives to create a vivid backdrop that is evident at every turn in the story. Boyden emphasizes native culture by weaving in traces of organic magic to create a subtle layer of the supernatural that hums along throughout the narrative. It is obvious that he has conducted extensive research for this novel, weaving in threads of cultural character that travel with the timeline of the story: the Feast of the Dead, the wampum belts, the importance of the three sisters (corn, beans, and squash), and the role of community. These all come together to paint a clear image of daily life for the indigenous peoples described.

“What’s happened in the past can’t stay in the past for the same reason the future is always just a breath away,” Boyden writes. This is why The Orenda has the power to evoke change. Canada carries the weight of a tumultuous history with the land’s original inhabitants, and this novel brings the origins of that conflict to the forefront of the public mind, behind an accessible narrative and well-known author. Boyden has crafted this masterpiece of Canadian fiction with the intention of not only dilating native history, but underlining the presence of indigenous people.

a, News

Rethinking the role of the academic senate

by Ellen Cools on

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As hearings concerning Canadian Senate reform begin today, McGill has begun a process to consider the  reform of its own academic senate.

Across Canada, academics, students, and professionals alike are engaging in discussion about the Senate’s role at universities.

At McGill, these concerns may soon lead to change; at the Oct. 16 Senate meeting, debate on the topic of Senate reform led Principal Suzanne Fortier to form a special subcommittee to identify solutions to issues concerning Senate’s purpose and structure.

Academic Senates are governing bodies in charge of a university’s academic affairs. One of the first comprehensive explanations of the purpose of an academic Senate in Canada comes from the 1906 Report of the Royal Commission on the University of Toronto, which identified Senate as a necessary body, despite its flaws.

“Much of [the Senate’s] work has, in practice, been relegated to committees,” the report reads. “Experience has shown that the reports of these committees must, in general, be adopted without debate, if the transaction of business is not to be unduly delayed.”

Over 100 years later, many academic senators have criticized Senate for very similar reasons. At the most recent meeting, senators criticized a lack of debate on motions and inefficient use of time due to lengthy informational presentations.

Joey Shea, senator and VP university affairs of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), emphasized the need to reform the schedule of the agenda to address this issue.

“If we could have that time period set aside at the beginning of every Senate, I think it would make senators much more engaged and willing to speak about things, instead of knowing they’re coming to Senate to simply raise their placard and approve things that have already been slated for approval […] or to just passively listen to reports,” she said.

However, information sessions are necessary for senators to gain an understanding of the issues at hand, according to biology professor and Faculty of Science Representative Graham Bell.

“The sessions for information are sometimes a bit dry, but on the other hand that’s what makes the university business transparent,” Bell said. “If those information sessions are not included in Senate meetings, we really don’t know what’s going on.”

Senate’s power in decision-making is at the core of many contemporary questions about the academic Senate in Canada, according to a 2004 study by Glen A. Jones, Theresa Shanahan, and Paul Goyan.

“Our study suggests that Canadian Senates have an important traditional and symbolic role, but that their practical and meaningful participation in important, defining university decisions is limited and perhaps even diminishing,” their report reads.

In response to similar problems, other Canadian universities have revised their Senate structure. For example, the University of Guelph reduced its Senate from 215 to 162 seats in 2011 to promote active participation, according to University of Guelph Secretariat Kate Revington.

“[Senators] expressed a wish to see if the size could be reduced proportionally—while still respecting the need for representation of the constituent groups—in order to increase opportunities for Senators for engagement,” Revington said.

Political science professor and Faculty of Arts Representative Catherine Lu said Senate plays more of a participatory role in academic affairs, rather than being directly involved in decision-making.

Lu cited McGill’s decision to offer Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) last year. Although the topic of MOOCs was discussed at a Senate meeting in January 2013, the Senate was not involved in making the decision to implement them.

“[Senate] had a very wide-ranging discussion with many divergent views about whether or not MOOCs would be a good thing; but the fact is that Senate was never asked to make a decision about whether or not in principle we should pursue this,” Lu said.

Lu suggested that committees provide written recommendations that must be debated and endorsed by Senate before action is taken by the senior administration.

Despite the governing body’s flaws, Shea said Senate is still a necessary component of university governance to properly represent all members of the university.

“I think it’s very important to have a senate because Senate is the only time and place where all parties in the university are [together] and are represented,” Shea said. “So I see a lot of potential for Senate, but right now the way it’s structured is not as efficient.”

a, Opinion

A word for the liberal arts

by Victoria Dillman on

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With budgets being cut left and right, and students worrying about their employment prospects after university, Liberal Arts degrees have come under siege. The question—or accusation—on people’s minds is whether the Liberal Arts are truly relevant to life post-graduation.

In recent years, budget cuts have been a serious concern for universities, including McGill in the past year. While a variety of faculties have seen resources cut, an emphasis on revenue generation means that arts disciplines often fall to the cutting board first. The stated reasons are simple; Arts students, courses, and faculty, don’t make as much money in research or carry as much prestige. New innovations and discoveries are more often the domain of the sciences—at least in terms of tangible progress. Humanities exist more in the realm of hypotheses that are harder to confirm and exploration of topics that often don’t create a profit in the ‘real’ world. For this reason, sciences seem like a better investment for the future.

Another challenge facing the humanities is a drop in interest among students. While there are many ways to look at this decline, an oft-cited reason is the poor economy. This line is the same every time: we’re in a serious recession, as we have been since 2008, and life will not be easy for students leaving the safety of the university cocoon. The joy of learning for the sake of understanding the world around us, it seems, is no longer the goal of university; it is soley an investment towards our future and job security.  While on some level, university is too expensive to not be an investment, it has gotten to the point that many have dismissed the idea of learning for its own sake outright.

The perception that Arts degrees aren’t applicable to real-world jobs is false. While Liberal Arts students don’t often come out of university with a working knowledge of the Higgs boson, they do graduate with the ability to think critically and creatively, and to communicate their ideas in a  clear and concise way. These skills help in the workforce for a variety of tasks and are something employers are looking for. They take a lifetime to teach, but are infinitely applicable, no matter the job.

Certainly Science degrees are lucrative, and a safer choice for employment. While one area of study isn’t better than the other, the Liberal Arts are—and always will be—relevant. They foster an appreciation of learning and provide the basic skills for broad careers. They can be risky in terms of employment, but they’re incredibly rewarding in terms of learning and appreciation of humanity.

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