Luckily for me, last Thursday was the most recent installment of Docville, a monthly series of documentary screenings hosted by the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM). The film screened,The Act Of Killing, was a remarkably unique documentary filmed entirely in Indonesia.

Largely made under rookie director Joshua Oppenheimer, but executive-produced by cinema heavy-weights Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, the documentary focuses on Indonesia’s traumatic past and present collective memory.

The film follows Anwar Congo and a few other men that were involved in the government-sponsored massacre of communists that occurred between 1965 and 1966. Previously, Indonesia’s President Sukarno had maintained authority by forming a tenuous alliance with the  Indonesian Communist Party against the right-wing military. In September of 1965, however, the assassination of a number of generals was cast as an attempted communist coup, and the military soon began a campaign to exterminate all communists in Indonesia. By 1967, somewhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000 alleged communists had been murdered, and the Communist Party was all but non-existent.

Anwar explains that in 1965, he and his friends were promoted from “cinema gangsters” who made their money scalping movie tickets to paramilitary executioners. Over the next year, Anwar brags, he personally ended more than a thousand lives.

The film, which tells the unique story of a few in order to ask far-reaching questions about life, death, and human nature, has strong thematic similarities to Herzog’s other non-fiction work. Like Herzog’s Into the Abyss, for example, a film about men on death row, The Act of Killing looks at life through the eyes of those who kill.

Oppenheimer’s film, however, is far more bizarre than Herzog’s typical creations. For one, rather than holding Anwar and his fellow thugs accountable, the present Indonesian government celebrates the men as heroes. Indeed, the corrupt, totalitarian regime enshrines the extermination of communists as a glorious moment in Indonesian history. The state repression remains so intense, in fact, that most of the Indonesian members of the film crew appear as “anonymous” in the film’s credits to ensure their identities are protected.

Even stranger than the Indonesian celebration of mass murder is the film’s structure, which, as one critic put it, seems like a “throwaway gag from a post modern novel.” Rather than simply interviewing the former paramilitaries about their past, Oppenheimer asks them to engage in their own filmmaking process and re-enact their killings for him. The men decide to recreate their murders in the style of the classic American films they once sold tickets for, and the generic tropes for Westerns, film noirs, gangster flicks, and even musicals, become the structuring elements for the restaging of a genocide.

Many of the men’s conversations about their past occur on set during their re-enactments. Preparing to shoot, so to speak, the men stand around in cowboy hats, 1940s-style double-breasted suits, and bikinis, boasting about how many people they killed, and the ages of the young girls they raped (14 being the most desirable age, according to one).

Anwar also describes how he and his friends would go see Elvis movies and dance straight from the cinema to the paramilitary office down the street where they suspected communists were being interrogated.

“I’d give the guy a cigarette,” Anwar describes, “I’d still be dancing, laughing . . . It was like we were killing happily.”

Make no mistake: this is no Ken Burns history lesson. Rather than delivering a fact-based account of the horrors that took place, the film explores uncomfortable questions about the relationship between film, history, and personal experience.

Most importantly, perhaps, the film asks how to locate personal morality and guilt in a world that has gone mad. Anwar, despite the government’s celebration of his actions, is plagued by nightmares and second thoughts that worsen with the re-enactments. His friends, on the other hand, ostensibly feel no guilt: it’s just a “nerve imbalance,” they tell him. “You are haunted because your mind is weak.”

One of Anwar’s guilt-free pals, Adi Zulkadry, justifies his actions by noting, with disturbing accuracy, that “‘war crimes’ are defined by the winners . . . I’m a winner, so I can make my own definition.” Adi points the finger of blame back toward America when he notes that “when George Bush was in power, Guantanamo was alright. The Americans killed the Indians” he continues, “has anybody been arrested for that?”

The doc also explores the bizarre role of American film in real-life violence, and the performative nature of killing. Most unnerving, perhaps, is Anwar’s boast that he borrowed execution methods directly from violent American flicks. The thugs’ choice to re-enact the murders in the style of classic American genres is thus disturbingly fitting.

American culpability in the genocide extends far beyond its cinema, however: the CIA has admitted that, in 1965, they supplied the Indonesian military with names of communists to murder and allegedly provided them with the funding and training to do so.

The film emerges as a disturbing and disorienting mise-en-abyme of historical reality, collective memory, personal experience, and cinema. Refusing the audience any simple access to truth, The Act of Killing interrogates the documentary genre’s claim to reality, and is the most important piece of non-fiction cinema I’ve seen in years.

Don’t take my word for it though – Morris and Herzog became the film’s executive producers only after they saw and were blown away by Oppenheimer’s finished product.

Herzog, upon viewing the film, said “I have not seen a film as powerful, surreal, and frightening in at least a decade,” calling it “unprecedented in the history of cinema.”

The post The Act of Killing appeared first on The McGill Daily.

While this is a pretty accurate reflection of my views on film, I can’t help feeling like I’m being a tad unfair. After all, out of the tens of thousands of Hollywood films out there, there must be one or two good ones, right?

These suspicions were confirmed last week after I found a copy of Johnny Guitar, a 1954 Hollywood Western that I’d been hankering to get my hands on. I had read that before he went on to direct Rebel Without A Cause, Nicholas Ray had managed to slip some genuine subversion past the American Motion Picture Production Code censors in the guise of this generic cowboy flick. Last week, two years after I first started searching, the film finally cropped up in the library catalog, and was even more unique than I had expected.

The subject of the film is Vienna, played by Joan Crawford, a tough-as-fuck saloon owner who’s as comfortable in an evening gown as she is in jeans and gun holsters. The story begins when Vienna’s former lover Johnny Guitar, played by Sterling Hayden, rides up to her saloon after a five-year absence. Shortly after their reunion, however, a murder is committed on the outskirts of town. The murdered man’s villainous sister Emma is desperate to pin the crime on Vienna and a group of her friends, all of whom are innocent. Vienna and Johnny are forced to fight it out with Emma and a posse of townsfolk, first with rhetoric and then with pistols.

Despite the film’s title, Vienna is clearly the star of the show, with more lines and screen time than any other character. A commanding, heavily masculinized female character like Vienna would be uncommon in any genre of that era, but was completely unheard of as the lead in a Western. While the 1960s and 1970s were full of disruptive, challenging Westerns, the all-American genre was at its all-American height in 1954, and initial reviews trashed Crawford as sexless and romantically forbidding, telling her to leave the saddles and Levi’s for someone else.

As well as taking a badass gun-toting woman for its lead, Johnny Guitar powerfully condemns the repression and persecution of the McCarthy era. It subtly suggests that the reason Emma wants Vienna hanged is not for her brother’s murder, or even plain bloodlust, but homoerotic lust, a desire Emma is unable to name and therefore must destroy.

More striking is the film’s allegorical denunciation of the McCarthy witch hunts, as the villainous mob that falsely accuses Vienna quickly becomes a stand-in for anti-communist hysteria. The posse, clad  in black, vividly resemble a mob of puritan witch hunters, and they use the very same interrogation techniques that the House of Investigation of Un-American Activities (HUAC) used to identify Communists in the film industry. Emma promises Vienna’s friend Turkey that if he testifies that Vienna is guilty, he will go free, mirroring the way in which members of the film industry were intimidated into naming names.

The real-life identities of Ward Bond, who plays the sheriff that legitimizes the posse, and Hayden, bring an unnerving realism to the allegorical content. Bond had been active in the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, the main purpose of which was to fight communism in the film industry. Hayden, on the other hand, was briefly involved in the Communist Party, and as a result was grey-listed and then subpoenaed by HUAC, and forced, like Vienna’s companion, to name names.

Despite the initial negative reviews and challenging content, the film opened to great success at the box office. Pretty soon the snooty film folk caught on, and François Truffaut was hailing it as an “intellectual Western,” a “delirious, hallucinatory Western,” and a “triumph of the heart.” Despite its Hollywood home, Johnny Guitar manages to be a bizarre dissident of a Western, a refreshing piece of proof that films can be both subversive and extremely entertaining.

L. G. H. is a U3 Cultural Studies student. Forays Into Film is a bi-weekly column about alternative films. Email her at foraysintofilm@mcgilldaily.com.

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This week’s column, however, has nothing to do with the Academy. For us snooty folks who are more interested in alternative, political films, engaging with the Oscars tends to be a relatively masochistic pastime. It’s not that I don’t love a good blockbuster from time to time – some of my best friends are blockbusters – but watching people who are already swimming in money and recognition get heaped with more of the same, while independent filmmakers struggle to get projects off the ground, is sometimes more than I can bear.

Instead of working myself into a frenzy of impotent rage over the red carpet, I decided to focus on something more positive. Last Thursday, Toronto became the first city in Canada with a formal policy allowing undocumented immigrants access to municipal services like shelters and healthcare without fear of being deported.

In honour of this historic legislation, this column will focus on In This World, a 2002 docu-drama about undocumented immigrants, directed by British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom in the same year he made 24 Hour Party People. Angered by the post-9/11 atmosphere and its increasing xenophobia toward undocumented immigrants, Winterbottom made a film about two Afghan refugees who make the overland journey to London.

The film begins in Peshawar, Pakistan, to which Afghan refugees were first displaced by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s. After American involvement in the early 2000s, a voice-over tells us, the number grew to over one million. Here, we meet the protagonists, Jamal Udin Torabi and Enayatullah, refugee cousins whose uncle arranges their trek to London. On a journey increasingly fraught with danger, Jamal and Enayatullah are forced to shed their native language, clothes, and culture in hopes of establishing a better life.

Though ostensibly a work of fiction, In This World is in many ways a documentary. Winterbottom went to Peshawar and found non-professional actors to play the roles of Jamal and Enayatullah. Not only were the actors themselves Afghan refugees, they also shared the names of Winterbottom’s subjects. Winterbottom and his crew then took Jamal and Enayatullah – the actors – on the exact same route taken by the film’s protagonists for the shoot. As the actors had never left Peshawar before, and the film was largely unscripted, their responses to new places like Tehran, Istanbul, and Italy are genuine. Furthermore, Winterbottom’s filming crew was often missing the necessary documents to get the actors across borders, and much like the smugglers in the film, had to resort to bribes and lies. At one point, a member of the Iranian border guard discovers Jamal and Enayatullah and sends them back to Pakistan. In fact, the Iranian border guard was playing himself – Winterbottom offered to pay him to demonstrate what he would do if he discovered Jamal and Enayatullah were illegal.

In addition to using non-professional actors, shooting on location, and relying heavily on improvised dialogue, the film’s cinematography and editing are entirely  in documentary style. The intense commitment to realism, though it sacrifices development of Jamal and Enayatullah’s characters, lends an emotional urgency to the plight of refugees that extends beyond the film and into the real world. By putting a human face on perceived ‘outsiders,’ In This World works as a powerful rebuttal to the xenophobic sentiments that first inspired it.

At the end, when Jamal finally arrives in London, the film seems to suggest that his future there, as an undocumented immigrant with no friends or family, is highly uncertain. Indeed, for many migrants without papers, the end of a dangerous journey is only the beginning of a new struggle. Toronto’s new legislation means that for hundreds of people in Ontario without documents, that struggle will be a little bit easier.

L.G.H. is a U3 Cultural Studies student. Forays Into Film is a bi-weekly column about alternative films. Email her at foraysintofilm@mcgilldaily.com.

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This week I’ll continue my exploration of radical films about race with one of these radical early African films, Black Girl. Made in 1966, the film is not only one of the earliest movies, African or otherwise, with a black female protagonist, but also the first feature by director Ousmane Sembène, often cited as the father of African film.

Even before Sembène earned such high praise, he lived a remarkable life of political resistance. Born in rural Senegal in 1923, Sembène fought in World War II, stowed away to France, joined the French Communist Party, and helped lead a strike to impede the shipment of weapons for the French war in Vietnam, all before he ever picked up a camera. Sembène wrote two socialist novels before he switched mediums, hoping that through film, his social critique could reach a larger audience. Luckily for him, his second novel earned him an invitation to Moscow, where he would have an opportunity to study filmmaking before finally returning to Senegal in 1960.

Previous to the 1960s, the only films made about Africa were Western, and shot black Africans through the lens of either paternalisim or blatantly malign racism. When anti-colonial films were made, such as René Vauthier’s Afrique 50, or Chris Marker and Alain Resnais’ Les Statues Meurent Aussi, they were banned in France and its colonies. It was only with the liberation of many African nations around 1960 that Africans began their own cinematic tradition. As Sembène explained it, “For us, African filmmakers, it was then necessary to become political, to become involved in a struggle against all the ills of man’s cupidity, envy, individualism, the nouveau-riche mentality, and all the things we have inherited from the colonial and neo-colonial systems.”

Black Girl, which Sembène adapted from one of his short stories, tells the story of Diouana, a Senegalese domestic worker whose white French employers go on vacation to France and take her with them. Taking place entirely in Diouana’s boss’ claustrophobic Antibes apartment, flashbacks show Diouana’s journey from the slums of Dakar to the maid market, a square where black women wait for white women to hire them, an image strongly resembling a slave auction. In Dakar, where Diouana’s employers were foreigners, they treated her with kindness and generosity, employing her only to mind the children. In their native France, however, to Diouana’s surprise, the couple reduces her to a maid. There, the couple and their French friends exploit, humiliate, and objectify the illiterate Diouana until her final act of resistance and self-expression.

Giving Diouana a voice-over that accounts for most of the dialogue, the film resists racist portrayals of Africans as purely physical, non-cerebral beings by constantly foregrounding her interiority. Further, it acts as a devastating indictment of colonial racism and classist oppression not only on an interpersonal level but also on an international level. As Diouana’s total dependence on her employers in France results in her exploitation, Sembène communicates more broadly that Senegal, though liberated, is still dependent on, and therefore at the mercy of France.

Sembène’s use of the medium of film to reach a larger audience paid off. Black Girl won the Prix Jean Vigo, a prestigious French award which, until 1966, had only ever been awarded to white directors. The film quickly became the first African film to garner international acclaim, immediately drawing attention to African cinema and its fiery critique of colonialism and global capitalism. Today, you can even find it on Netflix.

Like Bush Mama and Killer of Sheep, the American films it would help spawn, Black Girl is a film about exploitation and oppression from the perspective of the exploited and oppressed, a necessary alternative to mainstream treatments of race, gender, and colonialism from Django Unchained to Lincoln to Zero Dark 30.

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Sadly for Tarantino, the two most recent “Best Pictures,” The Artist and The King’s Speech, literally put me to sleep, so I feel fairly certain that a flick about a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) exacting revenge on white slavers doesn’t have a shot with the somnambulant Academy.

If there were an Oscar for most offensive picture, however, Tarantino would be a shoe-in. Using slavery as a platform for an action/revenge film that notoriously uses the N-word over 100 times, the director has been called out everywhere from Buzzfeed, to the New Yorker, to Spike Lee’s Twitter account,  Most recently, civil rights groups like National Action Network and Project Islamic Hope spoke out against Django action figures marketed to children.

Now, as I’m not black, and the film has already been extensively discussed by a host of critics who are, it would be irrelevant and inappropriate for me to spend time explaining why Django is so problematic. What I can add to the discussion, however, are a few recommendations for politically conscious films about race that wouldn’t make Spike Lee cringe.

My first recommendation is Nothing But A Man, a 1964 film made by two Jewish men that would become Malcom X’s favorite movie of all time. In 1963, Michael Roemer and Robert Young had no experience making narrative cinema, and decided to make a feature about black people living in the southern United States. Members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored (NAACP) advised the pair on the script, and they shot the film that same turbulent summer John F. Kennedy announced his civil rights bill, Medgar Evers was assassinated, and Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Washington.

With cinéma verité style realism, the film tells the story of a young black couple (Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln), who struggle through life in small-town Alabama as systemic racism threatens their livelihood and their love for each other. The film  deftly portrays not only the grave poverty suffered by much of the black community, but also the devastating emotional effects of those conditions.

When the film was released in 1964, the American Motion Picture Production Code still forbade showing black characters kissing, and no film had ever shown black characters in close-up. With their laughable $230 ,000 budget, Nothing But a Man had trampled Hollywood’s racial taboos and condemned white supremacist America like no other film ever had.

The next two films I recommend were made the following decade by members of a group of black artists known as the L.A. Rebellion. These directors studied and made films at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) between the late sixties and early eighties. In the words of Jacqueline Stewart, these independent filmmakers “attempted to both address socio-economic plight of black people still struggling for rights and recognition… and simultaneously develop their own personal artistic visions.”

One of the best known films from the L.A. Rebellion is Killer of Sheep, which Charles Burnett made on the weekends while he was enrolled at University of California, Los Angeles UCLA in the late 1970s. Like many L.A. Rebellion films, Killer of Sheep deals with the bleak everyday of Watts, L.A., the ghetto that played host to one of the worst race riots of the 1960s.

Here, while the protagonist Stan goes to work at the slaughterhouse, neighbourhood children play in the sun-drenched, decrepit cityscapes of industrial Southern Los Angeles, and his friends pull off low-level heists. As the camera wanders directionless through tableaus of life in Watts, the limited narrative structure and the crumbling backdrop of the neighbourhood underscore Stan’s sense of emptiness as he drifts further away from his wife and children. The film acts as a devastating revelation of the trap residents of lower-income neighbourhoods are forced to live in.

Lastly, another excellent film from the L.A. Rebellion is Bush Mama, made by Ethiopian-born director Haile Gerima as his thesis project, with Charles Burnett as the cinematographer. Through a startling fusion of documentary realism and surrealism that relied heavily on improvisation, Bush Mama follows Dorothy, a pregnant woman at the mercy of the racist welfare system in Watts. Her social worker pushes her to abort her pregnancy, her husband is imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, and the neighbourhood is terrorized by the police. Slowly, Dorothy, and the film itself, become radicalized by extreme circumstances as she explores the ideology of black power.

Unfortunately, the radical racial rhetoric and innovative style that make Nothing But A Man, Killer of Sheep, and Bush Mama some of my favorite films also ensure these films will never reach large audiences. Indeed, Django Unchained, with its relatively superficial treatment of racial issues, has been seen more times in the month since its release than these three films have been viewed in the decades since theirs.

I don’t mean to suggest you shouldn’t see Django, even if it is highly problematic (what Hollywood film isn’t?). At least this one was entertaining. I do suggest, however, that Django is purely entertainment, and that if you’re looking for meaningful racial commentary, you can look elsewhere and be highly rewarded.

The post Beyond Django appeared first on The McGill Daily.

With the presidential inauguration and the State of the Union address approaching, however, my Twitter feed will once again fill with quotes of the hope, strength, and spirit of the American people.

This weekend, to give my tender stomach a rest, I decided to skip out on schmaltzy new releases like Lincoln. Instead, I saw director Kelly Reichardt’s latest film, the pseudo-Western Meek’s Cutoff (2010), which, despite its low budget, boasts big names like Michelle Williams and Paul Dano.

Reichardt’s previous features, River of Grass (1994), Old Joy (2006), and Wendy and Lucy (2008), all deal with protagonists that are lost in life in present-day America. Characters seek freedom and redemption on the mythological American highway or frontier, only to find that it no longer exists.

Meek’s Cutoff, in contrast, deals with characters that are literally lost in America. The film follows a band of settlers and their guide, Stephen Meek, as they attempt to cross the High Desert of Oregonin 1845, but become hopelessly disoriented in the infinitely shifting, starkly beautiful landscapes of the West.

Now, Westerns are usually the stuff that American political rhetoric is made of. In its classical form, the Western dramatizes and resolves the conflict between two oppositional values within American ideology: on the one hand, civilization, community, and family; and on the other, individualism and freedom of the frontier. Obama similarly attempted to resolve this conflict in his acceptance speech, saying, “while each of us will pursue our individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together.”

Luckily for me, Meek’s Cutoff belongs to a group of films called Revisionary Westerns, which, since the 1960s, have been breaking down American ideology faster than politicians can rebuild it.

Meek’s Cutoff juxtaposes the mythology of the Western with the grim reality of pioneering, suggesting that the freedom of the frontier only ever existed in our imaginations. Instead of offering the pioneers freedom from societal constraints, the bleak landscapes play host to the relentless persistence of cultural norms. The settlers encounter a Native man, and struggle over whether to kill or enslave him. The female pioneers are consistently relegated to scrubbing dishes and darning socks, while the men make decisions just out of earshot.

Meek’s Cutoff also specifically critiques the filmic Western, invoking its tropes only to debunk them. Meek, the iconic, ruggedly masculine cowboy, spouts as much rhetoric about American freedom as any politician. His authority is consistently undermined, however, as his claim to know the West like the back of his hand amounts to nothing, and the settlers grow more and more disoriented. When the fabled standoff occurs, it doesn’t take place between two cowboys, but between the Native man, a woman, and Meek.

Without the structuring ideology of the Western, the film’s narrative structure collapses, and the viewers become as hopelessly lost as the settlers. Meek’s Cutoff eschews traditional plot structure in favour of slow, subtle movement, so that, thinking back on the film, it becomes impossible to order the events. The seemingly directionless plot is emphasized by the film’s unnavigable physical spaces. The heavily disorienting cinematography makes austere, marker-less landscapes even more confusing for the audience than it is for the settlers.

If Reichardt’s previous films ask how to live in present-day America, Meek’s Cutoff asks how to make an American narrative film when you no longer believe in America. So if you, like me, are sick of being told to have faith in the Star-Spangled Banner, Meek’s Cutoff is just what the doctor ordered.

L.G.H. is a U3 Cultural Studies student. Forays Into Film and Feminism is a bi-weekly column about alternative films, why she likes them, and where to see them.

The post A rebuke to empty patriotism appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The weekly cinema club, which meets at Café Le Cagibi on Monday evenings, screens a mix of cinephile favourites and rough forgotten gems. The entrance fee is “pay-what-you-can,” and the proceeds go toward acquiring films and equipment, most recently, a 16mm projector.

In an interview with The Daily, Tuck explained Cinema 17’s mandate as “if I’m not offending somebody, then I’m not doing it right.”

Tuck has, of course, been doing it right since he first began Cinema 17 in February, as a response to the Quebec student movement. Initially, the club was a platform for films exclusively about strikes.

“I thought this would be a really valuable way of mobilizing support for the strike,” Tuck said. “I was getting into arguments about screenings on the regular.”

After a few months of strike -related films, Cinema 17 broadened its mandate considerably, but continues to showcase subversive material.

“The emphasis is anything marginal, anything that will provoke political discussion, particularly along the lines of race, class, gender and sexuality,” Tuck said.

Last week, Cinema 17 showed Bush Mama, a gorgeous cinéma-vérité-style independent film about a pregnant woman living in the black ghetto of Watts, Los Angeles.

“I actually got an anonymous email from somebody calling me a racist and asking me why I feel I have the right to show this film,” Tuck said. “Of course, the only thing that would be racist is if I didn’t show the film.”

One of Tuck’s resources for films is McGill’s enormous collection of rare experimental 16mm films from the sixties and seventies, that was only recently rediscovered.

“One student in the mid-seventies, this film buff, was using McGill money to amass this collection of experimental films from the sixties and seventies,” Tuck said.

These films sat in a basement deteriorating, Tuck explained, until a member of the McGill staff stumbled upon them, and asked a film professor to come take a look before they were discarded.

The collection includes some films that had their first screenings at Cinema 16, the screening club Cinema 17 models itself after. Operating in New York in the fifties and sixties, Cinema 16 was the first to screen a number of the most important, and most controversial avant-garde films of the time.

Next week, Cinema 17 will continue to challenge its viewers with a screening of LA Plays Itself, a 1972 hardcore gay porn film.

“It was at the vanguard of pornographic film in that era, and helped usher in the period that was called porno-chic,” Tuck said, adding that Salvador Dalí and Groucho Marx were in attendance at some of the film’s first screenings.

While the subject matter may cause some to flinch away, Tuck rightly stressed the importance of gay pornography for the gay civil rights movement, as well as the importance of watching and discussing pornography in general.

“We always facilitate discussions after screenings […] I don’t want people to just come in and watch the films and be on their way without thinking about them,” Tuck said.

Cinema 17 is based on a participatory model, so even if 1970s hardcore gay porn isn’t your thing, you’re welcome to come take in the film and express your views.

The post Screening Subversion appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The McGill Senate will review the University’s Policy on Harassment, Sexual Harassment, and Discrimination Prohibited by Law this year for the first time since 2009.

Various student groups have criticized the policy since it was first instated as the school’s sexual harassment policy in 1988.

Among these groups is Advocacy Branch (A-Branch), the part of the volunteer-run Sexual Assault Centre of the McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS) dedicated to supporting students, faculty, and staff navigating the policy.

The two A-Branch volunteers interviewed identified the authority the policy gives to the Provost as a chief grievance.

“We find it disconcerting that the Provost has so much power,” said Taylor*, a current volunteer and former A-Branch representative. “Our concern is that the Provost isn’t required to have any training in sexual harassment or discrimination.”

Under the current policy, any member of the McGill community may file a complaint against another member to an Assessor, a volunteer member of the McGill community appointed by Senate.

If the Assessor fails to facilitate an informal agreement between the complainant and the respondent, the Assessor investigates and prepares a formal report with recommendations. The Provost evaluates the report and makes a final decision – one which need not follow the Assessor’s recommendation.

Associate Provost (Policies, Procedures & Equity) Lydia White and Provost Anthony Masi do not think this is problematic.

“It’s a matter of ultimately who’s responsible for how the University runs…It is not the Assessors, it’s the Provost,” White told The Daily, adding that the current Provost trusts the Assessors and has only ever followed their recommendations.

Regarding the Provost’s training on the topic, White said, “It’s just not clear that there would be time…this is just one part of his job.”

Masi said he attended the Assessor’s orientation, but did not pursue further training.

“A judge isn’t necessarily trained as a policeman or a prosecutor,” Masi said. “I don’t see why the Provost would have to have training, I’m more on the judge’s side.”

A-Branch also believes that Assessor training, which consists of an initial two-hour session with the University’s legal officer and one or two follow-ups over the course of the year, is inadequate.

White noted that starting this year, additional training from the Social Equity and Diversity Education (SEDE) Office would be provided.

Another aspect of the policy over which Taylor expressed concern is the absence of a formal appeal or complaint procedure. While complainants do have recourse to the University’s Grievance Procedure, A-Branch believes that it is ill-suited to cases of sexual harassment.

According to Taylor, “Going through a different procedure as an appeals mechanism means you have to recount your story again to more people…it’s heavy for someone to carry that.”

White expressed uncertainty about whether or not there should be a formal appeal process, and Masi believes it is unnecessary.

“There is already the ability to make your case to an Assessor. The Assessor makes an initial judgment. That judgment is then reviewed,” said Masi. “I know in baseball you get three strikes, but I think the second level up is sufficient.”

Professor Prakash Panangaden, an Assessor since 2007, voiced different concerns about the structure of the policy.

“Students are still afraid of filing complaints against their professors, and employees against their managers,” said Panangaden. “I don’t think people feel protected enough by us…I don’t feel like I can protect them that effectively either.”

Specifically, Panangaden felt that he could not protect complainants if their cases were not successful.

“We have rigorous demands for evidence…When it’s some low-grade continuous harassment that I can’t pinpoint easily, or make a compelling case for a particular side, then I can’t really put an end to it, or shield the person.”

“They have not done a good enough job to provide support,” Panangaden added. “I think student mental health [services] should be beefed up.”

Despite the various concerns about the general structure of the Policy, A-Branch’s main goal for the upcoming review is for McGill to at least adhere to it.

They point to the fact that the University has not upheld the part of the policy that stipulates the creation of “an office the mandate of which includes the education of, and the dissemination of information…concerning such matters as harassment, discrimination and equity.”

“An office does not exist,” said Taylor. “There is no one space that manages the distribution of information on the policy. It’s written in very legalistic language, and it’s very hard to understand, and nowhere on campus or online is there some kind of information to help people understand it.”

Quinn*, the A-Branch representative, said their second objective is to see the continued updating of the policy website.

White felt that the website does need more work, but that between the website and the services provided by SEDE, the policy’s requirements for an office had been met.

The SEDE Office distributes general information about equity, discrimination, and harassment, but little information about the sexual harassment policy itself.

Panangaden feels that an office for the policy is perhaps unnecessary, but that the policy needs to be better publicized.

“I don’t think anyone knows this whole thing exists,” Panangaden said.

At the last review at Senate in 2009, A-Branch presented recommendations to the review committee and succeeded in having the word “intent” removed from the policy’s definition of sexual harassment.

White said that she will be assembling the review committee shortly, and this year, A-Branch will be granted a spot.

Senate will vote on the review committee’s recommendations in March 2013.

*Names have been changed to preserve the anonymity of SACOMSS volunteers. 

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Prof. Panangaden had been an Assessor since 2010, in fact, he has been an Assessor since 2007. The Daily regrets the error.

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