The film contrasts the journeys of two groups of women in India – those competing in the 2011 Miss India pageant, and those serving in leadership roles in the Hindu nationalist Durga Vahini camps. It focuses on the experiences of two women: Prachi, a Durga Vahini leader who wishes to devote her life completely to the Hindu movement but whose parents want her to get married and have kids. The other is Ruhi, who is striving to win the title of Miss India and describes her stress about achieving her ambitions. The film explores how both of these women’s situations have shaped their dreams and ambitions, as well as their worldview.

Emina Ghajizai, a U3 Arts student, organized the screening along with Mehar Gujral, a recent Arts graduate, and Harleen Bhogal, coordinator of youth programming at the South Asian Women’s Community Centre. The three are members of the SAY Collective, which frequently hosts film screenings on topics relevant to women and people of colour.

Following the screening, Bhogal, Ghajizai, and Gujral led a discussion of the film. Bhogal emphasized that the debrief was intended to discuss the social issues addressed in the film or to share any reactions the viewers may have had, rather than to merely critique the film direction.

The audience reflected on the contrast between the experiences of the women in the two settings of the film: the Durga Vahini camp and the Miss India pageant.

“[The film] takes the perspective of the women and each of their dreams and aspirations – the worlds they are born into – to look at how they are being exploited and whether they realize what they have gotten themselves into,” Ghajizai said. “We’re talking about how different the same woman would be if born into a different world. It shows how women are competing to succeed in these worlds and the dreams and aspirations they have as a result.”

The World Before Her also highlights the roles of the girls’ parents on the dreams and ambitions of their daughters. Both of them strive to live up to their families’ expectations while negotiating their own identities.
Gujral explained that “in the beginning you don’t understand why one of these girls wants to be Miss India or a Hindu nationalist, but you see that their parents’ aspirations for them are so important, which is a reflection of Indian society, and other societies in the world where what your parents want for you is so important.”

Shaista Asmi, a U3 Arts and Science student who participated in the discussion, echoed this view, saying that “both Ruhi and Prachi are reiterated as being creations or products of their parents. It is relatable, feeling so obligated to your parents and fulfilling their wishes.”
Although patriarchy manifests itself differently in the two settings, the audience agreed that the women in each setting are oppressed by a system that has demanded their adherence to a certain lifestyle or a standard of beauty, in exchange for parental approval and societal acceptance.

“We talked about how each of these women are shaped by the environment that they’ve grown up in and how they’re just trying to achieve what they can with the resources they have,” Gujral said.

The film raised a multitude of questions for the attendees, specifically around the negotiation of women’s identities within a patriarchal context.

“No matter what women want, it’s in this male dominated society,” Bhogal said. “So what would women want in a non-male dominated society?”

“It’s essential to ask these questions and talk about them,” Ghajizai said. “We wanted to bring together people and have them talk about it.”

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In 2007, a study carried out by McGill estimated that the University had accumulated $647 million in deferred maintenance costs. This amount has now risen to an estimated $1.3 billion across the Downtown and Macdonald campuses, according to McGill Vice-Principal (Administration and Finance) Michael Di Grappa.

Deferred maintenance problems sometimes reach dangerous heights, such as in 2008, when eight employees in the Leacock building reported symptoms suggesting chemical exposure due to air ventilation problems. A building assessment failed to identify the cause of the symptoms, but found that the building’s air cooling machines had been removed and that both of its humidifiers were malfunctioning. This resulted in humidity levels as low as 10 per cent, below the Quebec building code requirement of 20 per cent and recommended minimum of 40 per cent.

In the Lyman Duff Medical Building, one of McGill’s most serious cases of deferred maintenance, lab experiments go awry due to faulty temperature controls, and narrow laboratory hallways, inaccessibility of safety showers, and a faulty eyewash station emitting hot water present hazardous conditions for students and faculty.

Students and faculty suffer in the Duff

According to students and administrators of the building, the Duff building is in many ways falling apart, presenting a hazardous and inconvenient research and learning environment. The Duff, home to McGill’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology (MIMM), was built in 1926, and an additional wing was added in 1966.

MIMM Student Affairs Officer Jennifer DiMassimo, who has been working in the Duff for over 35 years, recalls an instance a few years ago when her office was flooded.

“The window was closed but it had a hinge that wasn’t working, and so it blew open and the pipes had frozen. I came into my office and realized it was cold. I’m sitting here and I hear a noise and I turn around, and I see dark water running down the pillar,” DiMassimo said. “I looked up and saw the ceiling tile was laden with water and sagging. I moved away from the ceiling tile above me and the whole thing came down where I was sitting. I moved away just in time.”

Students have complained about the lack of adequate study space, locker space, vending machines, or a functional cafeteria, as well as about the inadequate safety measures and abnormal heating patterns that interfere with their experiments.

There are only two safety showers in the building, according to PhD student and teaching assistant (TA) Patrick Lypaczewski.

“To get to the [safety shower] on the fifth floor from a lab, you would have to go through two doors and down the hall, which is usually full of undergraduates, and by the time you get there it would not be of any use,” Lypaczewski said. “Some of the eyewash stations are badly placed, and one of them uses hot water – so if you used it, you would burn your eyes off,” he said.

Lypaczewski has been working in the Duff for three years as a PhD student and worked there for three years as an undergraduate.

Temperature control in the building is faulty. According to Lypaczewski, several machines in the building have shut down because they have internal temperature controls and the room was too hot for them to function. The temperature in freezers containing biological material, which should be kept at below -70 degrees Celsius, has climbed up to -40 degrees due to power failures, Lypaczewski said.

“There have been power failures on those freezers numerous times, and the temperature climbs and breaks everything inside that’s priceless, samples that you sometimes have only one of,” said Lypaczewski. “This affects all the students and professors doing research who use any of the freezers. Sometimes experiments work, sometimes they go weird and you end up losing a few months of work.”

According to a count by Lypaczewski, the Duff Amphitheatre has 34 broken spotlights out of 50, and 18 broken fluorescent lights out of an estimated 60.

Another issue of the building is the limited amount of lockers, and on top of that, the extremely small locker sizes. Many locker doors do not work, presenting a problem for MIMM students, according to U2 student Adam Hassan.

“You can’t put in any major locks in them, and when you try to open the door of the locker, sometimes it’s stuck and the entire locker starts coming down on you,” Hassan said.

Accessing food is also a problem for those who spend long days at the Duff. Located at University and Pins, the building is somewhat removed from the rest of campus.

“The closest place for food is the gym or lower campus. Most of the time we work nine-hour days, but it can be longer – a lot of immunology people are here from 7 a.m. until midnight,” said Lypaczewski.

“All we really have to hang out in is the cafeteria [which no longer serves food]. We don’t have food, we don’t have coffee, and we have to go the [Montreal Neurological Institute] if we want coffee,” said U2 student Olivia Crescenzi.

The building accommodates over 300 undergraduates, but the only available study space consists of two couches and a table on the fourth floor. Only one functioning computer remains there for student use.

The Duff’s undergraduate teaching laboratories are not well designed for the department’s needs either, according to laboratory course coordinator Aghdas Zamani.

Each laboratory cubicle has 12 students and each TA is assigned to two cubicles, which means that TAs must run from one cubicle to another during labs. The structure of the building has been called hazardous and inefficient, both by community members and in McGill’s review of the department performed last year.

“The ventilation in teaching labs is never such that […] students feel comfortable doing their experiments,” Zamani said. “We are trying to improve it. Last year they put in [air conditioners], and we are hoping that next summer [they] at least [work] and we have a better environment downstairs.”

U2 student Sean Taylor agreed. “You’re there for a four-hour lab, sometimes upward of five and a half, six hours, and it feels like it’s 35 degrees, since we can’t open the windows and Bunsen burners are running all the time,” Taylor said.

Zamani added that the preparation laboratory is not on the same floor as the teaching laboratory, causing problems for the technicians who are forced to walk up and down several times per day.

“This is not an appropriate way of working. Our tech unit is suffering,” said Zamani. “They promise that they will demolish the floor and give us a better setup, so that students and TAs will be together. But it hasn’t been done yet. […] McGill many times has promised it,” she said.

Tom Ringer, who manages the Biobar supply centre in the Duff and runs the department’s autoclave (pressure chamber used for sterilization) and glass-washing facility, said that two of the building’s four autoclaves are functional but in bad condition due to overuse. The autoclaves are twenty years old. Generally, autoclaves are expected to last about ten years, Ringer said, though with proper maintenance they can last longer.

“When I’m running the autoclave room, sometimes the autoclaves and glass washers don’t work because the steam goes into the machine and what’s not used goes back through the system,” Ringer said. “The pipes are corroded. It’s slowly changing, but unfortunately the plumbers have more to do than look after one building, so they do what they can,” Ringer said.

Maria Babiak, associate director of the Administrative Excellence Centre that serves the MIMM department, said that her office faces constant issues as well.

“We’ve had an ongoing request since last February to get a new [electric] plug installed in our space, because we only have two circuits, which have five computers and a big photocopier and [are] constantly blowing fuses. It’s been a year since we’ve asked for the photocopier to be on a separate circuit, and [we] are still waiting,” Babiak said.

“It’s very embarrassing to have students come here and see the state of this building and the labs,” said DiMassimo. “McGill has a reputation of being a very renowned, good university, and then you have the reality that people come and see what type of facilities we have and the condition of those facilities.”

Quoting the review of the department conducted in 2015, MIMM department chair Joaquín Madrenas told The Daily that “the state of the available space in the Duff Building could hamper the future ability of the department to recruit the best new candidates and to retain existing faculty.”

Attempts at improvements in the MIMM department

Madrenas, who took office in August 2011, said he has since been working with his team toward his vision of revamping the space resources to meet the needs of the department.

“Overall, we have tried to make the building nicer to the view, painting areas and clearing spaces. But this is not enough. The main challenge right now is to fully redevelop the undergraduate teaching laboratories to accommodate the growth of our undergraduate program,” Madrenas said.

Although the MIMM department will continue to make significant use of the Duff building, Madrenas’s aim is to relocate the departmental labs and offices to another space more suitable for the research needs of members and for increased interaction with other departments and units at McGill, potentially the recently vacated Royal Victoria Hospital site.

MIMM Senior Administrative Coordinator Patrick Ritchie has been overseeing the building’s improvements over the past year and a half. He commended the progress made under Madrenas’s leadership, while recognizing that there are still improvements to be made.

“There was an old computer room that used to look like a cave and is now a conference room, and there is a new lounge also,” said Ritchie. “I worked a lot on the beautification of the building, making it look better and work better, and we are now painting the D wing so it’s brighter.”

“Of course, there are still things that need to be taken care of, but it needs money to happen,” added Ritchie.

Unfortunately, the funding required from the Faculty of Medicine and the University to complete these renovations and repairs has not yet been available.

“It’s a combination of factors: […] a lack of money and resources for space allocation, as well as the complexity of space planning,” Madrenas said. “[The Duff] is just one of the most extreme cases of buildings that need to be renovated [at McGill], but not the only one.”

Awaiting investment in infrastructure

In February 2015, the McGill Board of Governors approved a financing plan to address the university’s most pressing deferred maintenance issues. Di Grappa told The Daily that McGill is borrowing $400 million to invest $300 million in deferred maintenance and $100 million in information technology (IT) projects.

“The government’s annual contribution of about $48 million is by no means as much as we need, so we’ve really taken the initiative to make a major investment in the condition of our buildings,” said Di Grappa.

McGill plans to repay these funds by issuing bonds that are repaid in different time frames. “We just raised $160 million this past month, which will be repaid over forty years. Next time we are in the market it will be repaid over twenty years. Then the last amount we raise will be repaid in ten years,” Di Grappa explained.

The MacDonald Stewart building, the Strathcona Anatomy and Dentistry Building, the Lyman Duff Medical Building, and Wilson Hall, among others, are on the list of buildings the University has plans to invest in. According to Di Grappa, the Duff building alone would require an investment of an estimated $200 million to transform it into a state-of-the-art facility.

Despite ongoing investments in infrastructure, deferred maintenance problems have continued to grow in recent years, and it is unclear when the users of the buildings in question will see tangible improvements.

“We have been waiting for renovation for a long time,” said Zamani. “But it hasn’t been done yet. We are still waiting.”

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As a result of more relaxed measures by Immigration Quebec over the last two years, it has become significantly easier for international students to run for and hold executive positions at the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU).

In June 2014, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) issued a new set of regulations regarding study permits which requires students to be “actively pursuing” their studies while in Canada, which requires them to be full-time students.

All international students must have a valid Quebec Acceptance Certificate (CAQ) and a federally issued study permit to pursue studies in Quebec. The CAQ is issued for the duration of time that a student expects to study in Canada, but can be extended should the student decide to prolong their studies.

SSMU executive positions are full-time, with job contracts stipulating seventy hours per week. As a result, students in these positions almost always take on a part-time course load during their terms. In some instances, their contracts indicate that they can be enrolled in a “maximum of six credits.”

L’Ecuyer told The Daily that in the past, Immigration Quebec has maintained stringent rules requiring students to complete at least 12 credits per semester, in order to approve an extension of their CAQ.

SSMU’s current executive team is comprised entirely of U.S. and out-of-province Canadian students, as has been the case historically, said SSMU President Kareem Ibrahim.

It will change the representation in SSMU and the perspectives here.

Immigration and status requirements have generally been far more relaxed for U.S. citizens than other international students.

“[To work at SSMU], HR told me I just had to get a SIN [social insurance number],” said VP Internal Affairs El-Sharawy, who is a U.S. student. “There was also a missing clause on my study permit so I just went to the border and got it fixed. Honestly, it wasn’t a hard process, but I’m not sure if that’s the case for non-Americans.”

As per Fall 2015 enrollment, out-of-province Canadians make up 25 per cent of McGill’s student population and U.S. students, 7 per cent. McGill’s 45 per cent Quebec population and 22 per cent non-U.S. international population are entirely unrepresented on the SSMU executive.

“We see greater disconnect between international students and Quebec students. They are proportionally less involved [in student politics] than out-of-province students and Americans,” Ibrahim said.
“I’m glad that there have been changes in government structures that will allow international students to hold positions in SSMU,” said SSMU VP External Emily Boytinck. “It will change the representation in SSMU and the perspectives here.”

L’Ecuyer, who also sits on the Advisory Committee on International Students and Immigration (ACISI) for Quebec, said that in the last couple of years, she has seen immigration officers relax their criteria in granting CAQ extensions to students who have taken part-time status due to personal, medical, or humanitarian reasons, including pursuing leadership roles in their community, such as in student government.

L’Ecuyer emphasized, however, that the final decision on a student’s case is at the discretion of the immigration officer, who will take into account the student’s entire status since their arrival in Canada. While being a part-time student during a term served as a SSMU executive would not justify rejecting a student’s CAQ extension application, it might make matters more difficult if they have already been a part-time student in previous semesters since their arrival in Canada.

Having international students could have facilitated more platforms to increase the level of empathy between student groups.

Considering that each case is unique, however, L’Ecuyer highly encouraged any international student considering holding part-time status or running for a SSMU executive position to visit ISS for a free personal consultation with one of ISS’s two immigration lawyers.

Despite SSMU executives’ desire to accurately represent the student body, El-Sharawy said that as the executive is bound by SSMU’s Legislative Council, having a more diverse executive team would likely not have changed any of the executive decisions.

“While I don’t think [the lack of international students on SSMU] changed how executives might have tackled things,” El-Sharawy said, “having international students could have facilitated more platforms to increase the level of empathy between student groups.”

El-Sharawy encouraged non-U.S. international students to take the opportunity of the recently relaxed course status requirements to be involved in the SSMU executive, and continue to increase their leadership involvement in faculty councils.

“[As a SSMU executive], you’re mandated to be neutral and respect all student groups. As international students with your own experiences, you can help create a bridge between different groups,” El-Sharawy said. More international students as SSMU executives “could have decreased friction between groups and tensions that occurred due to differences,” he added.

Having part-time status also means you’re spending more years here, which means you’re spending more money, as well as delaying your graduation, in addition to the visa adjustments.

McGill International Student Network (MISN) President Afreen Aliya said she is hopeful that the change will increase international students’ involvement in student politics and help raise awareness for issues affecting them, such as changes to international fees.

Aliya is confident that MISN’s reach of over 2,000 students will prove instrumental in spreading awareness about the recent changes.

Dean of Students André Costopoulos agreed that a relaxation of full-time status requirements for international students will facilitate their participation on campus. He encourages them, however, to keep in mind the additional concerns that come along with maintaining part-time status as an international student.

“As an international student far away from home and your support network, you’re a person first – so you have to prioritize your well-being – a student second, and you can pursue a leadership position or politics third,” Costopoulos said. “It’s perfectly possible but it involves certain balancing.”

“Having part-time status also means you’re spending more years here, which means you’re spending more money, as well as delaying your graduation, in addition to the visa adjustments,” he said.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly implied that international students are no longer required to be full-time students to keep their immigration status. In fact, the requirement stands, but Immigration Quebec may now allow them to keep their immigration status even if they are part-time students under exceptional circumstances.

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