Though I couldn’t see it for myself, this is probably the climax of McGill’s primary tactic for dealing with students (at least over the past five years): stonewall students until they give in. This has happened in a variety of shapes and forms – from the travel ban for research to moving opt-outs online. It’s been accompanied by a similar practice of releasing major decisions over summer vacation or winter break, which is nothing short of a hostile gesture as administrators are well aware active students are either too busy or out of town.

As a former Daily editor, I can think of perhaps only a few instances of the University relenting to student pressure: one of them being firing Former Chancellor Dick Pound for his inappropriate comments about First Nations. More recent news show that instances like these are merely anomalies. They did not relent on the use of the McGill name, international tuition deregulation, the Architecture Café, cancellation of Echoes of the Holocaust, military research on campus, and, currently, on the issue of MUNACA.

While the administration has insidiously attempted to homogenize and sterilize student life, I have to echo McGill’s History Department and ask: who are they, those people whom we pay six figure salaries to, to run our institution and why do they have the monopoly on power? Sure McGill students have a union (SSMU), but, during major decisions, it feels like its relation to the administration tends to reflect that of 19th century labourer and capitalist, not the stronger 20th century incarnation of organized labour.

It’s not the fault – per se – of student leaders, but more often a reflection of the fact they have only one vote on the Board of Governors and are outnumbered on senate. (I would like to note that, given the “moral fibre” of some past SSMU presidents, I could anticipate a BoG member asking them “what they were doing after graduation,” to get them to cooperate much the way Congressmen are bought off by lobbyists).

The real problem on campus lies in the fact that decision-making is concentrated in a body divorced from the realities of academic and student life. We have no say in who runs McGill from the top – how the principle, provosts, academic dean, or any of the other administrative top dogs are chosen – and I imagine that most faculty are equally powerless. There is a very sharp divide on campus between the people with power, and those who don’t – but it’s one that is directly disproportional to who has a stake in what happens on campus.

Because of this, any sort of democratic decision making is, at best, nominal. Sure, they’ll let students pick a trash compactor, create an Office of Sustainability, and run other non-confrontational projects (which are helpful in their own way), but we don’t have any power where it really counts – what kind of research happens on campus or how much tuition we pay.

And that’s why McGill can sanction riot cops to beat their students, and, I assure you, nothing is going to happen. Because ultimately, the administrators always get their way – since, after all, you have finals to worry about.

Erin Hale is a U4 Philosophy student and a former News Editor for The Daily. She can be reached at erin.hale2@gmail.com

The post Hyde park: A school with no student input appeared first on The McGill Daily.

“Zach is NOT my roommate, but he shouldn’t step down either.”

“Zach is corrupt – but I can only tell you seventy per cent of the story or my sources will go fucking ape shit!”

The above are all various reactions in the campus media and blogosphere to the news that SSMU President Zach Newburgh has been lobbying on behalf of Jobbook – a new social networking and job search site.

If you haven’t been following the story, Newburgh was nearly asked to step down, and ultimately censured because members of SSMU Council and the executive (who have not been identified) were concerned Newburgh had a conflict of interest: he never told SSMU of his involvement, received shares in the company for his trouble, and travelled to England, California, and other parts of the U.S. to promote the site – perhaps even presenting himself as the president of SSMU. This information wasn’t revealed until months later, when there was a possibility SSMU could also buy shares and his confidentiality agreement ran out.

This might sound straightforward, except for the fact that a majority of information in stories both in The Daily and the Tribune was either leaked or anonymous. This is because the entire marathon spent discussing the pros and cons of Newburgh’s involvement with Jobbook occurred in camera – or in confidential session.

It appears a lot of councillors are afraid they will be sued for libel – because if they break the confidentiality agreement they could get kicked out of SSMU and lose access to their legal defense fund. I’m sure this is all very personally distressing, but some of them appear to have been kind enough to actually speak with The Daily and the Tribune.

But that does not absolve SSMU from the responsibility that students still deserve to know what happened – beyond what was slipped to the media. Whatever your opinion is of Zach’s conduct, it’s still one of the biggest stories to come out of SSMU in years. It’s also on its way to being one of the most mishandled, given the level of secrecy and fear under which it has proceeded.

A major part of the democratic process is informing constituents of why decisions were made and how – to the last boring millisecond of deliberation (the reason C-SPAN exists!). Not allowing students to read the minutes of the meeting itself, and leaving them to quibble over what may or may not have happened has created a fresh imbalance of information (re: power) at SSMU. There’s a small group of people who know exactly what happened; a ring of student journalists, friends, and bloggers that may have some idea but lack the paper trail to write about it; and everybody else. And who is this protecting?

All this covert “deep-throating” is also aggravating because members of the campus media are basically being discredited for doing their job, and it places the burden on them to prove the story, as opposed to those councillors who tried to get Newburgh out of office. Anonymous sources and unattributed information look inherently sensationalist, especially when they concern a case of potential corruption. If you read a few of the online comments responding The Daily’s editorial, you’d think the paper made the whole thing up. What this means is that councillors can’t risk their own names, but they can risk the by-line of a news writer or an editorial board – who can still get sued for libel. The limited information is also dangerous because it gives bloggers or commentary writers just enough to run with and make unsubstantiated – yet seemingly credible – claims. This story could easily disappear, but it’s kind of disturbing to think someone may have represented our student union without our consent.

If you care, write to your student councillors urging them to release information from the session. This can be achieved through a 200-signature petition to force the question onto the agenda of the next Council session, or by getting an individual councillor to bring it up.

—

Erin Hale is a U3 Philosophy student and a former Daily editor. Write her at erin.hale@mail.mcgill.ca

The post The student media deserves answers appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Consider the completely random example of the General Assembly. According to SSMU President Zach Newburgh’s narrative, the GA is broken, students want direct democracy, and those who are attempting to maintain the existence of the GA as it stands are somehow content with the status quo (either no substantive debate, or wild debates about geopolitical issues).  The solution he put forward with two other executives, and a councillor provides a new forum, the Annual General Meeting (AGM), with a limited agenda and no legislative impact, along with the capacity for students to introduce motions themselves at student council. It also deletes several pages of by-laws, which include things like speaking rights and procedure.

Take out your copybooks, and follow along as we break down what all of this actually means.

The General Assembly is broken

SSMU politicos like to say this. It’s snappy and concise, so it’s an ideal catch phrase for anyone trying to tokenize a complex issue. It’s true the GA as it stands is not working – the problem is that this fact is being used as a reason in and of itself to totally abolish it.

This point also misses the corollary that the GA is broken because SSMU councillors and executives made it that way. SSMU has to educate students on what the GA is and the kind of power it gives to them, and do a lot more than motion writing workshops, because at the end of the day, the GA is really just a set of rules and procedures (some of them arcane, it’s true). To have a genuine forum of constructive political debate on campus, you have to build your base and create conditions conducive to its success.

Students want direct democracy

Again, this declarative statement is true, and it’s being used to address the very genuine concern that the GA isn’t representational.

The real joke is that this argument is being used to centralize and restrict debate. Somehow we are expected to believe that having an AGM with four available topics of discussion, a referendum (which we already have), and no guarantee of speaking rights at council (even if students present motions), we’re expanding democracy.

Supporting the GA is supporting the status quo

I think very few people support the GA “as it stands,” because as it stands the executive and councillors don’t promote it, the rules are totally unintelligible to anyone not in Model UN, and the motion writing workshops aren’t promoted.

What’s more important though, is that the GA as it stands has one important thing no one seems to want to talk about (and would be completely removed): Strike GA’s. In 2005 SSMU participated in a province-wide strike to protest tuition increases, and in 2012 it will likely find itself in the same position. SSMU is supposed to be committed to accessible education, and participating in this strike could be an important expression of that ideal. Even if you don’t agree with free education, or prefer increases in student aid, there are many reasons to participate in this debate, not least of all out of solidarity with our francophone counterparts.

It’s true you could have a strike referendum question, as you could have many other questions significant to student life listed in a multiple choice format.  But these kinds of events – and democracy in general – are about more than clicking a button.

—

Erin Hale is a U3 Philosophy student and a former Daily editor. Write her at erin.hale@mail.mcgill.ca.

The post On the subject of GA reform appeared first on The McGill Daily.

What they’re saying, though, is: “Don’t engage in critical thought.” Because what is politics, really, but a critique of power – and who should hold that power?

Take an on-campus example: The McGill Daily and the online outlet the Prince Arthur Herald – or the left and emerging right of campus opinion pages. Though they like to bicker and mock each other, they really aren’t that different. The Daily and the Herald are both based in part on the perception that certain minority groups ought to have their voices heard, and the power structures examined that suppress them. They just disagree on the fine print of who is being victimized.

But the real threats to thought and expression at McGill aren’t the people who openly align with a political ideology or cause – the Spencer Burgers and Sarah Woolfs of the world. It’s the people who seek to suppress it under the banner of decency and “togetherness” that are the real danger. It’s a reminder to be “complacent together” in the status quo, implying that there is something unsightly about discourse. Why ask any questions at all if people are just going to get agitated? In fact, why think at all if we can be “green together?”

It’s true political discourse is an ugly beast, especially on a university campus. The discussion around Choose Life last year was a bloodbath – as was the General Assembly motion invoking a reference to Israel/Palestine: people cried, people made accusations, people flew flags and reverted to knee jerk identity politics.  A lot of mistakes were made on both sides, and these examples are held up as reasons why we shouldn’t have General Assemblies or fund politically controversial groups we might not agree with. I made my own mistakes during the Choose Life debate, but I also learned a lot  about how to form and express a political opinion, and when the dust finally settled, I bet that there were a lot of people who came out of it with the same realization.

An article in the New York Times Magazine this summer (“What is it about 20-Somethings?” Robin Marantz Henig, August 18, 2010) discussed the emerging theory that the early twenties are a distinct stage of development, as our brains are still changing – in particular, the prefrontal cortex and cerebellum, or “the regions involved in emotional control and higher-order cognitive function.”

Applying this to political discourse, it would appear that university is the exact stage of life when we should be learning how to practically apply and expand critical thinking. It’s going to be messy – blame it on our brains or lack of emotional maturity. But killing off institutions like QPIRG and the General Assembly, or letting ourselves be bullied into complacency could mean that we lose the important developmental experiences of forming independent criticism and expression outside the classroom. This is the time to make mistakes, and learn from them.

In the end, elites will take care of elites. They’ll make sure their own stay in positions of power – at McGill and beyond. It’s in their interest that students never mobilize to express their political will, because they might learn something and apply it later to the overarching structures of power in Canada and the United States. And then there would be a real problem. You might see the man behind the curtain.

—

Erin Hale is a U3 Philosophy student and a former Daily editor. Write her at erin.hale@mail.mcgill.ca.

The post Discussion is not divisive appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The McGill Daily: You are a former SSMU president, and the Daily’s archives seem to show that you had a good relationship with the administration.

Julius Grey: The administration in those days was academic; it was not business. The administration changed during the [former McGill principal] David Johnston years [1979-1994], our present Governor-General. It became much more conservative, much more concerned with fundraising and big business than the actual day to day fraternization between the administration and the academics. We did not have a professional, bureaucratic, business oriented administration. What we had were a bunch of academics who were named, and you’d see them in the faculty club. There was no real difference between [administrators] and the other professors. And when I came back from England and started to teach, I would walk up to Principal Robert Bell and say, “Bob, what’s the policy in this or that.” There was not the same barrier.

One of the things that worries me – if you read the Times Literary Supplement, New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and Le Monde Diplomatique – you’ll find all over the world a growing corporate takeover of the university, so that the university is all a matter of corporate money coming into places and sponsoring research. Remember that the research will not be objective. It’s difficult to imagine sponsoring economic research that concludes they should be nationalized. When you say that I as student council president was close to the administration, yes, but it was a bunch of academics. The people I was close to were not at all right-wing, they were all of different views and different shades, but they were all people who wrote books and believed the financing of a university depended not on corporations but on the government.

MD: Do you see the new type of administrator as accountable to students?

JG: They’re not. They’re not accountable to students; they’re not accountable to faculty. What you’ve got is a growing alienation, a Marxist alienation – a term which I use consciously. The professors are being alienated, the students are being alienated. One day what will happen is what happened in the middle ages in that everything was in the hands of the church, and then there would be secessions: people forming their own little groups. The real origin of Oxford and Cambridge was that people would gather around informally around some guy who had a somewhat different view of Holy Communion that might be considered heretical somewhere else. And they would discuss it. And the Sorbonne became great because people like Abelard and Thomas Aquinas who weren’t fully orthodox in every possible way, and they too found Aristotle, found some of the Arab philosophy and applied it. What you’re going to have sooner or later is people either seceding from the university, saying all they’re doing is they’re training MBAs or engineers for business, and you’re going to have discussion groups, clubs like during the French revolution – the Jacobin club. Because I don’t think we’ll take it. I’m not interested in a corporate university. I think companies, if they want to participate, they’re welcome – but on a level playing ground. They’re no different from unions, from other lobbies, and in the end, the university must not become an instrument of lobbies.

MD: What do you think of Heather Munroe-Blum?

JG: I think she is part of the new system, and I criticize the new system. But I don’t criticize her personally. I think she’s a very able and charming lady. It’s not her fault. It’s that the whole university world and North America has fallen into the hands of corporations. The reason it’s falling more and more into the hands of corporations is because the government is withdrawing. It’s cutting taxes, it’s making savage cuts. All universities have tremendous problems because they had to guarantee pensions. The pensions are fixed return pensions, so [employees] guaranteed X amount of money. Then their investments crashed in 2008, and they have a hole in their pension account. And the government, which is in serious trouble, doesn’t want to fill that hole. So what they’re saying is “manage, cut, get rid of unnecessary things.” And then what happens of course is the corporations come in and say we’re not all that interested in Latin scholars, but engineering, MBA, Law: “we might be able to fund as long as we can be certain you fund these programs the right way.” But don’t let the university become dependent on a particular lobby.

MD: What are your thoughts on the Quebec government’s decision to increase tuition in 2012?

JG: On tuition increases, what I want to say is that the present tuition increases are not written in stone. Remember, what I’m paying for my children right now, is virtually the same thing I was paying, with the inflation having doubled. So I’m not saying though that they could not raise the tuition fees a very moderate amount. But there are two things: First of all, if they’re raising it in order to cut the subsidies to the universities, it’s not at all improving the university. The university will get nothing; they’ll end up with the same thing. It’s relieving the pressure on the government so they can cut taxes for big corporations. It’s people like you subsidizing big corporations, and I certainly don’t want to see that. The second thing is, without being dogmatic, that it’s got to be exactly the amount it was last year, there’s one fundamental principle that without which the left has no sense: there are certain things that have to be accessible to everyone, and the most obvious two things are health and education. The third one is culture. The fourth one – which is not for everybody, but it has to exist – is a minimum income –minimum security that if you fail, fall ill, do something wrong you can’t fall below a certain point, and your children will have the same access to education, health, and so on.

In the long run what it does is put the government in the hands of an elite, that doesn’t use the public school system, public health system; they’re not interested in it. They let it fall into complete neglect, and gradually you have the foundation of firm and impenetrable classes: those who have gone to the private schools, the private hospitals and clinics, who have private performances, who go to vacations in private clubs – and the average person who can no longer get there. So without postulating there can never be an increase in tuition, or it can’t go up or down a few dollars, the whole trend of terrible things is McGill’s arrangement of the [self-funded] MBAs, of the University of Toronto’s paying law degree. My God, I shudder at the thought. In 1989 they got rid of the Russian Revolution, and maybe it had gone wrong, and Stalin was a murderer and so on, and all that was true. But now they’re doing away with the French Revolution. They’re doing away with the notion of liberty, equality, and fraternity. There’s no more liberty because there’s a security state around, there’s no equality because they’re allowing the formation of classes and they don’t want to fraternize with anybody. So what we’re doing is watching the undoing of the French Revolution, and I’m asking myself when are people going to wake up and say, “No you can’t keep cutting taxes, and putting in private institutions at all costs.” This is exactly the opposite of what we’ve fought for. I became a moderate in the 60s and 70s because I thought the battle had been won. We got Medicare, the segregation system fell apart in the United States, and so on. But right now the world’s going the opposite direction, and nobody’s saying a word.

— Compiled by Erin Hale

The post Back in the SSMU of ’69 appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Singh launched a constitutional challenge of his bail conditions earlier this month, but the Crown prosecution – the Ontario government’s law team – has asked for more time to prepare their case now that PEN Canada will intervene on behalf of a restriction placed on Singh’s freedom of expression.

Peter Rosenthal, Singh’s lawyer and a University of Toronto professor, explained that many of the bail conditions violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“We say it’s violating the freedom of expression, the right to peaceful assembly, freedom of association. Also section 11(e) of the Charter is that everyone has the right to reasonable bail; we’re saying the conditions he’s under are not, under the circumstances, reasonable bail,” he said.

As Singh awaits a possible trial in 2012 on charges of criminal conspiracy, mischief, conspiracy to both assault and obstruct police, and obstruction of justice, he cannot hold a passport, use a wireless device, participate in a public demonstration, or associate with his co-accused.

Singh, currently under house arrest, is required to obtain a note to be in the presence of other adults for specific purposes if outside his workplace or residence.  If he violates any of these conditions, he risks losing his $85,000 bail.

“The bail conditions are quite repressive, include house arrest, and that he cannot organize in any demonstrations, which is something he does quite a lot,” Rosenthal said.

 Speaking from Toronto, where he is required to stay in the home of one of his three sureties – a legal term signifying those responsible for a person during their bail term – Singh described these conditions as punitive.

“If it goes to trial, it’s not inconceivable at all that the charges get dropped halfway through, that they don’t stick, or that I win at trial. What the bail conditions do is they serve to be a form of punishment, when I haven’t been tried or convicted,” Singh said.

“Bail is supposed to be about making sure someone comes to court, that people don’t recommit criminal offenses, and that society is protected. … If [the Crown does] think that, they’re not going to prevent any of that by preventing me from demonstrating, [or] using a cell phone,” he added. Singh and Rosenthal are also not allowed to publicly discuss any of the evidence brought against him at the hearings.

Singh’s case has moved back into the limelight as a variety of groups have lined up to denounce his bail conditions, from No One is Illegal to Quebec’s Ligue des droits et libertés. PEN Canada, a non-profit group that defends writers’ free speech, made media waves when they announced on November 10 they had brought legal counsel on board to intervene at the hearing.

Program coordinator Brendan de Caires explained that PEN Canada was specifically concerned with the ban on Singh’s right to participate in demonstrations.

“Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says that you have the freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression. We think it’s not consistent with that to tell somebody he can’t, as a condition of his bail, communicate with people. We think it’s an abridgement of that right,” de Caires said. “How does that make a Canadian unsafe? … Can you tell someone, ‘You no longer have the right to give opinion publicly’?”

Though over 1,000 protesters were arrested at the G20 in June, Ontario’s Crown Attorney singled out Singh with 18 other individuals for allegedly committing “conspiracy.” They all face similar charges and bail conditions, with some facing a curfew, but Singh is the only one of the group who has chosen to protest the restrictions in court.

Community organizer Alex Hundert, who has also been charged with conspiracy, made news after he was arrested in September for discussing the G20 at a Ryerson University panel – allegedly breaking the “no demonstration” ban. Hundert was only released after accepting more bail restrictions.   
Singh said that the harsh bail conditions faced by him and others were a reflection of the level of repression at the G20.

 “[The conditions] are not surprising, because the G20 is about excessive use of force on the streets, abuse of authority by the police, and the complicity of the Crown in the repression and in that abuse, by continuing with charges, by allowing them to linger, and by not being forthcoming with disclosure that would reveal all of this,” said Singh.

The post Jaggi Singh appeals bail conditions appeared first on The McGill Daily.

However, you should redirect your attention to the Daily Publications Society Board of Directors (BoD). The editorial boards of The Daily and Le Délit don’t make ad policies. Members of both edboards have seats on the BoD, but it is also filled with members at large from the McGill community.

So direct your comments to chair@dailypublications.org.

Erin Hale
U3 Philosophy
Former Coordinating News editor

The post It ain’t The Daily, it’s the DPS appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Erin Hale
U3 Philosophy
Daily Staffer
Former Coordinating News Editor

The post Enough said appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Erin Hale
U3 Philosophy
Daily staffer
Former McGill Daily News editor

The post Trib flubs Arch Caf’ ’cott cred appeared first on The McGill Daily.

AUS President Dave Marshall confirmed that AUS has not filed a complete tax return in several years. Sources inside AUS claim that tax woes began with the 2003-2004 executive, and that over the years incomplete exit reports and accounting errors had compounded the problem.

The current executive was unaware of the government seizure until September, Marshall said, when they received a duplicate of an original notice sent by the Quebec government this spring.

“We were very much under the impression that we had inherited a clean house, in the sense that we know we had these issues in the past, but believed that they had all been resolved in the past,” Marshall said.

Shehreyar Jamshed, last year’s VP Finance, said he did not know about the unpaid taxes when he took on his position last year. “I didn’t know about the situation but suspected it because we couldn’t find tax records from before,” he wrote in an email to The Daily. “The tax issue appears to be a very old issue.”

However, as the year progressed, Jamshed said the AUS executive became aware of the back taxes. “During my term in office I tried to collect data on when the last time we paid taxes was and how much we owed,” he wrote.

“AUS council was also aware we could not find tax records, and were trying for months to find enough information to pay them,” continued Jamshed.

Marshall suggested that government notices about AUS’s unpaid taxes might have been lost in McGill’s internal mail, or might have been overlooked during the transition from the 2009-2010 executive to the current one this spring.

Marshall was concerned with the timing of the news that AUS had bungled its finances, as AUS currently supports the re-opening of another student-run service, the Architecture Café.

“The fact we didn’t pay taxes in the past few years does suggest a great amount of negligence on our part, and [on the] part of the AUS as a whole,” Marshall explained. “I would be remiss to suggest of our executive that we cannot function, in a time like this, when the ability of students to run organizations is brought into question.”

AUS Council was informed of the situation during a confidential session on September 22.

Though AUS is similar to a non-profit organization under Quebec law, it is still required to pay taxes on income earned from events, the sale of alcohol, and SNAX profits, as well as capital gains taxes on its investments, endowment, and interest earned from its assets.

Marshall and a source within AUS, who spoke anonymously due to confidentiality requirements, said that the amount seized by the government was artificially high because it was based on the assumption that the AUS would make a profit every year, based on projections on the last annual declaration of assets, submitted in 2007.

However, it was recently discovered that last year’s executive ran a deficit of $51,000 – though they initially reported a surplus – after they misallocated funds for the Arts Student Employment Fund.

“I have spoken to last year’s executive: many of them don’t understand how that could have happened.  It appears there was a misunderstanding with how those funds were allocated or distributed. It’s been a little frustrating for this year’s executive because it seems we’ve spent a large amount of time fixing problems left by previous executives,” Marshall said.

This meant any government assessment would have been inflated.

The AUS is currently attempting to appeal the assessment, but sources within the AUS say their chances are “slim to none,” as the 90-day deadline to submit an appeal to Revenu Québec has likely run out.

Marshall and a source within AUS said steps have already been made to correct accounting mistakes, which they saw as the product of systemic miscommunication and accounting errors in payroll and inventory.

“Our major task this year is to rebuild not our student services, because they are fantastic, but rebuild the infrastructure that surrounds those services,” Marshall said. “A permanent office administrator is coming in, [to improve] the way we do our departmental bank accounts, things as simple as payroll.”

Marshall does not think the seized back taxes will significantly affect the AUS operating budget this year.

The AUS has also externalized its payroll services to the same firm as McGill, and is currently working with four former McGill students, who have offered their services pro bono, to improve the way the executive handles taxes.

The post AUS back taxes seized by government appeared first on The McGill Daily.

There’s a lot of momentum behind the drive to reopen Arch Café, which means we should escalate our actions, not take the administration’s dismissal lying down. An organized boycott is one way of letting the administration know that we support student-run initiatives on campus. If it’s large enough, a boycott could put the struggle for such initiatives in the limelight. The Montreal Gazette has written two stories on the Arch Café debate, and rumour has it that Maclean’s may be interested as well.

Even if you never went to Arch, you should still support a boycott because this is ultimately about more than one café – the issue at stake is the hegemonic nature of McGill’s food services and the corporate attitudes of our current administration.

To use an example, at 2 a.m. Thursday morning I started a Facebook boycott event half-jokingly. Within 12 hours it had 1,000 members (at press time, around 1,700; though it won’t mean much unless they are serious). Wall posts were very telling about the universal anger felt by students: while the initial comments concerned Arch, within a few hours they turned to a critique of corporatization of campus and absence of student consultation. There were angry posts about the overpriced and bland food provided by Aramark, McGill’s corporate supplier, as well as its questionable labour practices. Rather than let us have an alternative to Aramark (who just this year replaced Chartwells), the administration has systematically shut down any non-corporate food services.

The best places to start boycotting are faculty and library cafeterias like the Redpath Oasis, or anywhere you see the Martlet meal plan sign. And if you boycott, you won’t be alone. Midnight Kitchen is hosting an organizational meeting today about how to proceed in support of Architecture Café (at 7 p.m. in Shatner). The Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) Council voted Wednesday to work with SSMU and the Engineering Undergraduate Society (EUS) on a one-day boycott; the EUS and SSMU Councils will likely debate similar motions this week. Even if faculty societies and Midnight Kitchen don’t provide food, though, boycotting isn’t that hard: there are still alternatives on or near campus, none quite as nice as Arch, but certainly cheaper than Aramark’s foodstuffs.

Faculty food stands like AUS Snax, the Management Undergraduate Society store Dave’s, and EUS’s Frostbite are still student-run and serve fair trade coffee for half the price of the McGill cafeterias. If you want a meal, the Rabbit Hole Café and Midnight Kitchen provide vegetarian and vegan lunches (respectively) for a small donation, while the SSMU cafeteria and Thomson House provide a wider variety. And there are still places to eat across the street from school like McGill Pizza and Super Sandwich. You could even bring your own lunch!
In the meantime, let Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) Morton J. Mendelson, the administration’s point man on Architecture Café, know that you are boycotting: email morton.mendelson@mcgill.ca, or drop off a hard copy at the Office of the Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) Room 621, James Administration, 845 Sherbrooke O.

Erin Hale is a U3 Philosophy student and a former Daily editor. Write her at erin.hale@mail.mcgill.ca.

The post Boycott McGill food services appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Though registration shortfall was cited as an official reason for the financial loss, in the days after Council, Londe was singled out as responsible for many of the management and budgeting errors made while the event was being planned.

However, the press release – signed by AUS President Dave Marshall and VP Communications Frances Hui – stated that this was not a factor in Londe’s decision.

“Contrary to recent speculation as to Ms. Londe’s resignation over issues pertaining to the budget and organization of the AUS 2010 Frosh event, Ms. Londe cited personal issues in her decision to resign,” Hui and Marshall wrote. “Ms. Londe wrote in her resignation letter to the AUS Executive, ‘Unfortunately due to personal reasons, I will have to take a year off from my studies at McGill, and will therefore no longer be eligible to fill [the position of VP Events]’.”

Arts Senator Amara Possian told The Daily in an email that she and other councillors were considering moving forward with impeachment if Londe did not resign. She noted that several Frosh coordinators, who had worked under Londe to plan Frosh, had also expressed an interest to her in seeing Londe replaced.

“We were waiting for the release of the budget so we could see how much student money was lost and so we had time to look into how financial decisions were made,” Possian wrote. “Regardless, we had the constitutional grounds to go forward with an impeachment if necessary.”

In a separate email to The Daily, Londe said that she was aware of the impeachment rumours, but reiterated that they did not factor into her decision.

“I was never planning on resigning or even on taking a year off, but I received some very distressing news Tuesday morning that made me realize I was going to have to take the year off, which forced me to resign my position,” Londe wrote. “I had heard that all of the buzz surrounding Frosh might have been leading to impeachment, but again, I was never planning to resign. I stand by what I said in Council, and in the interviews I gave, which is that Frosh was a learning process for me and for everyone involved.”

Marshall, however, explained that as of September 14, no official impeachment proceeding had gone forward. “There was no plan amongst the executives to go forward with impeachment. I can’t speak for all of council of any motion going forward. There was no business slated for Council when the [press release] was written,” he said.

AUS Council is expected to elect a new VP Events at its next session, on September 22. 

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In an apparent breakdown of Arts Undergraduate Society communication and management, Arts frosh is believed to be in severe debt this year. The deficit was announced last week at AUS council, and the exact figure is expected to be released sometime this week.

 AUS VP Events Nampande Londe cited under-registration and unanticipated costs as the main reasons for the shortfall. Only between 1,450 and 1,500 students registered, despite an earlier increase in capacity by 300.

 “The reason we set an additional cap at 1,800 was so we made sure we provided any first-year or incoming student under the jurisdiction of AUS the opportunity to participate in frosh,” Londe said, explaining that first-year students from the Faculties of Education, Social Work, and Arts and Science in addition to regular Arts students – around 2,500 first years, according to Londe – were eligible to participate in Arts frosh.

 Casey Adams, one of six Arts Frosh coordinators, said the decision to increase capacity caused many planning and budgeting difficulties and went against the wishes of several coordinators.

 “The budget shortfall was caused in large part because food, clubs; all of that was budgeted expecting a max cap of 1,800,” Adams said.

 Frosh needed 1,600 students to break even.

 To cover costs, registration was eventually opened to all McGill students for four hours on the last day to cover costs. Adams and another frosh coordinator, Yusra Khan, took issue with this decision at Council.

 “The only motivation behind it was showing a profit margin and not giving a better event to the first years,” Adams told the AUS Council,  noting that many of the more belligerent students he met were in the upper years.

 A operational staff member speaking on condition of anonymity claimed that some organizers, desperate to register students, allowed Concordia students to sign up. AUS President Dave Marshall has said this confusion may be due to the fact that non-McGill students were allowed to attend night events as guests of actual participants.

 The same frosh coordinator also attributed last-minute planning and Londe’s four-day absence due to a family emergency in early August as reasons for budgetary problems.

 “[Her] absence caused me to be late on food deposits, and [frosh coordinator Brock Clancy] to be late on deposits for pubs and club night venues. A large Provigo order had to be done in three days because the SSMU and OAP refrigerators were unavailable after [Londe’s] failure to give them advance notice,” the coordinator wrote in an email to The Daily.

 “Without refrigeration, all the food had to be delivered the day of, instead of being bought from a wholesaler like Costco and stored. Failures in organization like this abounded, and the increased costs were mostly a result of the rushed troubleshooting we had to do to cover failures,” the email read.

 Londe felt that belated purchasing did not pose a financial problem.

 “From my perspective, most of the things…would not have been any cheaper if we had bought them in advance,” she said.

 At Council, Londe attributed most of the planning and budgetary problems to incomplete information passed on from previous years, which meant frosh organizers incurred many unexpected costs.

 “When looking at last year’s budget, a lot of things in there weren’t explained – what they were, where they came from – so while they made money, we can’t entirely be sure,” she said. Many of the budgets included an incomplete list of receipts, or were confusing to follow.

Initially suggesting to Councillors that the budgets may have been “falsified,” she later told The Daily that there was no evidence for that belief. Marshall also confirmed that none of the independent annual audits in recent years have ever revealed foul play. 
 “There’s nothing to suggest it was falsified. What did concern me is there’s no way to really prove some of the numbers, and that’s really something that can’t continue,” Londe said.

 Also raised as an issue at Council was the fact that VP Finance Majd Al Khaldi was not involved in drafting the budget – which Marshall and Londe later explained was due to confusion over his jurisdiction.

 Khaldi, who was not mandated to stay in Montreal over the summer, was out of town while most of frosh was being planned, although his staff was present to help.

 “While I was skulking away in the desert, my book keeper was still keeping tabs on [Londe] and her team. So there was a sort of controlled situation, it’s just not as ideal as it could have been,” Khaldi told councillors.

 At Council, questions were also raised as to whether contracts were not in place until the morning of the pub crawl, and that other venues may not have been established until relatively late.

 “We had contracts signed with the majority of the bars. Some of them we pulled in at the last minute, so we got them to invoice us, which is the equivalent of a contract,” Londe told Council.

 “Those [organizers] handling the pub crawl got switched, some people did some bars, some people did other ones. Sometimes there was a lack of communication and that’s how sometimes we ended up with invoices instead of contracts,” Londe explained further in an interview with The Daily. Londe has insisted that these are equivalent to legal contracts.

 However, a member of the operations staff – speaking on condition of anonymity because of a fear of damaging a personal relationship – felt this was still problematic for an organization as large as AUS.

 “Verbal agreements – frankly, given how much money the AUS handles – are not acceptable,” the staff member said.

The printed version of this story incorrectly stated that an anonymous Frosh coordinator stated that Concordia students may have participated in Frosh. It was in fact said by an anonymous operational staff member. The Daily regrets the error.

The post AUS Frosh in the red appeared first on The McGill Daily.

McGill Daily: The Master and Margarita is said to have a large influence on you. One of the quotes associated with you from the novel is the idea that “manuscripts don’t burn.”

Salman Rushdie: It’s very strange, I think, in retrospect the way in which the story of Bulgakov’s novel has come to echo what happened to The Satanic Verses. That novel was also banned and ridiculed, and really didn’t even exist in a full Russian version until more or less the fall of communism. It’s really quite extraordinary that the books should have those parallel lives.

And then of course [The Master and Margarita] contains the question of destroying the text. In that case, of course, the text [in the book] is destroyed by the author, the Master himself. He doesn’t like his creation, and the Devil is the one who is shocked by the idea that he should try to destroy the book. It’s the Devil that says “Manuscripts don’t burn.” I’ve always thought it’s a very beautiful line, because what it means, of course, is that ideas are imperishable. There’s a line like it in a great play by Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt, a play called “The Physicist,” in which one of the characters says, “What has once been thought cannot be un-thought.” I think that’s true and I think Bulgakov knew that was true.

MD: Another Bulgakov quip associated with you is that “Books survive, writers don’t.” Clearly you’ve survived, but 38 people associated with The Satanic Verses did not, or received death threats.

SR: There were all kinds of people who were attacked. It was a terrible time and I think that the courage with which publishers and booksellers withstood these threats has never been given enough credit. Really, this was a battle fought by ordinary people. It was not fought by great public figures…. [There were] other attacks of bookstores around the world, and attacks on people connected with the publication – at least one of whom was sadly murdered, which was the book’s Japanese translator.

MD: A major theme in The Satanic Verses is a “critique of the closed, and absolute belief system.” In your 20 years since writing it, how have you seen “closed and absolute systems” change or evolve, either politically or religiously?
SR: Well, I think there is more now about than there was then. It’s easy to say that that’s something that’s been happening in the Islamic world, and it has. But it’s also been happening in the extremes of North American Christianity. And more depressing, I’ve just come back from India, and it’s quite clear there’s a growth of sectarian extremism in India. It’s not just in Islam but in Hinduism as well: a kind of intolerance and censoriousness which was never characteristic of Hinduism.

MD: Why do you think that is?
SR: Everybody wants to get in on the act. What happens is people see it working for one community and they think they want some of that too. I’ve always thought one of the things about extremism, of which the extreme form is terrorism, is that there is a kind of glamour about it. It makes otherwise unimportant lives feel momentarily important.

MD: In your talk, you discussed a tendency in Britain to “define yourself by your rage” in identity politics. Have you seen that to be true in North America or Canada?
SR: Well, I think it’s true worldwide, actually. People seem to be defining themselves by what they are against, whereas, I come from [another] generation. There is much to be said about the ’60s which is critical, because it was a kind of nonsensical time. But the one thing that was true about it is that people tended to define themselves by what they were for, and not what they were against. And that seems like a much more constructive way to lead a life. This kind of definition by negatives… damages the soul.

MD: You said the way we relate to narratives, or who has control of them determines the level of freedom in the world. Conversely, you talked about the disintegration of journalism. Do you see those things as related?
SR: Yes, absolutely. I think that what journalists do is one of the most valuable things in a free society. And it’s dangerous. If you look at the Iraq war, this is a war where more journalists have been killed than in any war ever before. It’s getting more dangerous to do this job properly…. And it will enormously diminish the quality of life in any society if that job can’t be done properly.

I think there is very good reason to think that’s going to happen. Because what happens in a moment of great change is that there are interregnums. I’m sure that at another point in the future there will be electronic news media that will be able to fulfill the role that the print media have done. The problem is what happens if there is twenty years in between.

MD: In 2006 you signed a manifesto with several other writers against religious extremism, and have spoken about the need to reform Islam. Can you discuss that?
SR: I think there’s no need to reform Islam itself as the need to reform Islamic society, because religion is religion. If religion is a private matter, then it’s nobody’s business but the person’s whose feelings are like that. It’s when religion becomes the basis for social and political organization, then that’s when you have to look at it. I think almost always, almost everywhere that that has happened, it has been, to put it mildly, a very conservative force, and often an oppressive force. It’s that aspect of it that needs reform.

I do think it’s very regrettable that within Muslim culture it is very difficult to historicize the study of Islam. I think a great deal would result from being able to look at the birth of this religion as an event inside history rather than some kind of supernatural event. I think it’s very important that attitudes towards women change; that attitudes towards sexual minorities change. I think it’s very important that people be allowed to speak more freely.

I think I’m right in saying that there is no Arabic speaking country now in which The Arabian Nights can be published in an un-explicated edition. The greatest, greatest work of fiction to be generated by the Arab world has to be censored to have all the naughty bits taken out. The Arabian Nights is an interesting book in that it’s really very low on religion and very high on sexual shenanigans, and that means that this great book is in very Bowdlerized editions. And that seems indicative of a problem.

– compiled by Erin Hale

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CFS is Canada’s largest student lobby group. CSU president Amine Dabchy felt the vote was the right decision for Concordia undergrads. “I feel very happy. I feel like students made the right and informed decision. We’ve been working all year to inform them,” Dabchy said. “I feel it’s only normal that [students] vote this way since they’ve seen all the [CFS] assaults on Concordia.”

The CSU is the second student union, after the University of Calgary Graduate Student Association (Calgary GSA), to vote in a referendum to leave CFS. The federation will lose around 39,065 members – 7.8 per cent of its membership – and $340,000 if both votes are ratified.

However, both referendums contravened a new CFS bylaw, known as Motion 6, that mandates only two member unions may hold referendum votes every three months. The bylaw was adopted at the federation’s annual general meeting in November – several weeks after some petitions to hold referendums had already been submitted.

Though 11 student unions submitted petitions for referendums, sanctioned votes were only granted to the McGill Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) and the Alberta College of Art and Design Student Society.

Nine known student unions in four provinces will vote on continued membership with CFS in the upcoming months, which will affect 20 per cent of all CFS members.

PGSS votes this week
PGSS will vote on CFS membership from March 29 until April 1, though CFS mandated the Society to limit voting to two days, according to PGSS VP (External) Ladan Mahabadi.

PGSS decided to extend voting, because executives were concerned they could not reach quorum in two days. On March 23, they published an open letter to PGSS members warning them that CFS supporters might attempt to interfere in the referendum.

The current PGSS executive have been some of the loudest critics of CFS on a national level this year, accusing the federation of being corrupt, litigious, and anti-democratic.

At the PGSS debates on continued membership, however, the pro-CFS committee leader Ben Akih Kumgeh criticized the reform motions PGSS executives presented at November’s CFS annual general meeting.

“The list of motions all for transparency, accountability…points to the fact that PGSS doesn’t seem to understand the purpose of the organization. We should question the fact our representatives seem not to take a diplomatic approach when they bring issues forward,” he said.

Unions bypass Motion 6
Five student unions holding referendums this spring will bypass the Motion 6 bylaw. In addition to restricting the number of referendums held at the same time, Motion 6 also increased the number of signatures required on referendum petitions from 10 per cent to 20 per cent. It also mandated that membership referendums may only be held once every five years per union, up from once every two years.

The five student unions, however, have moved to ignore Motion 6 because it was ratified after many had already applied for a referendum by petition.

University of Regina Student Union president Kyle Addison said Regina students could expect a referendum in spite of the bylaw.

“Basically what happened is the CFS retro-activated part of their bylaws from November,” Addison said. “What our campus decided to do was to go ahead with a referendum without them, but also to invite them in every opportunity to take part in it.”

Matt Musson, director of campaigns for the Calgary GSA, explained the decision of his union to hold a referendum despite a request by CFS to hold off on a referendum until 2011. 


Musson said CFS also asked that the university verify signatures on the petition to hold a referendum, and that the Society settle an outstanding debt of $30,000 to CFS.

Musson added that although the Calgary GSA fulfilled both requirements, they were only informed afterward by CFS that they would be unable to hold a referendum.

“It got to the point where we received a letter at the end of February [in which] CFS told us we might see a vote in 2011. We sent off a letter in response that said we are voting these days. They flat out refused to do anything about it,” he said. 

“[You could] probably say we broke bylaws with regards to the number of referendums allowable per year – but the exit bylaws were changed halfway through the game.” 

CFS-Quebec in jeopardy?
In addition to PGSS and the CSU, CFS-Quebec’s remaining members will also vote. The Dawson Student Union’s president Carl Perks indicated that students could expect a vote in the fall. The Concordia Graduate Student Association (Concordia GSA) will also vote from April 6 to 8.

Like the CSU’s, the Concordia GSA vote will bypass Motion 6.

Last week, CFS demanded that both of Concordia’s student unions settle outstanding debts before they could hold a referendum.

According to Dabchy, CFS claimed that CSU owed a debt of $1,033,278.76 in back payments, though financial records at the union indicate otherwise.

“We decided to dismiss [the debt] because we have all the paperwork to back our argument [that] we don’t owe them anything,” Dabchy said.

The Concordia GSA was informed this week by CFS that they owed $200,000 in debts dating back to 1995 – which accounts for approximately 80 per cent of the GSA’s annual budget, according to VP (External) Erik Chevrier.

Chevrier said he was concerned with the tone of correspondence from CFS at the time.
 “[CFS] seem to give an impression that a referendum is not about democracy or our members, but about procedure – and that they can deny our members the right to vote. It doesn’t seem that they care about our members but more about applying our rules to them,” Chevrier said.

The Dawson Student Union will follow CFS bylaws when it votes next year, according to Perks.

Ontario and BC may vote
Two CFS referendums may also be held in Ontario in the coming months. According to Brian Kombani, president of the Trent Central Student Association, students can expect a referendum next year.

The Central Student Association at Guelph University (CSA) joined the list of unions holding spring referendums late Wednesday after the Ontario Superior Court granted them the right to hold a vote. The decision concludes a disagreement between the CSA, CFS, and CFS-Ontario.

The University of Victoria Students’ Society (UVSS) may also see a referendum, according to UVSS Chair-elect James Coccola. Though UVSS has been a strong supporter of CFS in the past, a pro-referendum slate won 11 of 15 possible positions at the student union this spring.

“Our slate is very much in favour of holding a referendum because we have met the requirements to hold a referendum and [are] within the rights of the students to hold one,” Coccola said.

As this story went to press, CFS national treasurer Dave Molenhuis and CFS-Ontario chairperson Shelley Melanson had not responded to The Daily’s multiple interview requests.

Related stories:
Students at 13 unions petition to leave CFS, 9/20/09
PGSS moves to reform SSMU in mass proposal, 10/23/09
PGSS to debate CFS referendum, 1/21/10
CFS involved in three lawsuits in Quebec, 2/7/10
PGSS Council approves CFS referendum, 3/8/10

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