If your answer is “yes,” this article is for you.

To critique Remembrance Day is not being cruel to the dead. To disrespect the dead is to pretend that the collective struggle of humanity over 5,000 years has produced nothing, as the global capitalists pretend when they say “there is no money” while boarding yachts and letting the world starve. To disrespect the dead is to act as if billions of forgotten people haven’t suffered and died in the process of producing commodities from the earth under various forms of exploitation and domination. Is this not war, too?

The slaughter-glorifying gun-horny narrative of November 11 is a fantasy. Even if we did abolish monstrous fascism with redoubled reactionary violence in order to live under the comparative freedom of liberal capitalist democracy, should we really be so excited to experience the lesser of two evils? Every little privilege any person in our society benefits from stems from the exploitation of an incredible mass. How embarrassing that we find it praiseworthy to perform these celebrations of jingoistic nationalism — just like the authoritarian regimes we claim to have defeated.

Just over a year ago, the tensions of class war boiled to the surface of our McGill bubble when the MUNACA workers struck, but they were quickly swept under the rug by court injunctions. Then, on November 10, 2011, McGill had their phony social peace broken again when riot police stormed campus to smash protesters who had split off from the 30,000-strong march for free education and surrounded the James Administration building.

A visible crack in the façade of capitalism formed along with the mob, so the first response anti-riot unit entered the scene, using their bike tires to smash people in the face. After being repelled by protesters, the militarized anti-riot squad came. They walked calmly up to the students, who were now defensively linking arms, and pepper-sprayed them point-blank, beating stragglers with batons and lacing the air with tear gas.

I wonder how many poppy wearers also believe that the protesters deserve the beating because they fought back. Why be sympathetic with the person who hits other people for the bosses? Some blood-hungry death-fetishists actually refer to trained killers as ‘peace agents’ or ‘peace keepers.’

For the state and the powers-that-be, it is a necessarily violent act to take a small space and turn it into an autonomous zone. The powerful retaliate with violence because expressing the seed of real freedom is an actual act of escalation against a structure of domination that has already declared war on the people. I would probably be paranoid of being unmasked too, if it exposed my success as the result of exploiting a global mass of angry proletarians.

On Remembrance Day last year, I saw hundreds of uniformed men shoot fat cannons on lower field to celebrate “all-those-who-died-so-we-could-live-free-from-tyranny.” But we do not live free from tyranny, and war is not over – it claims hundreds of thousands of lives a year, and the majority of deaths are civilian. The fastest way to stop imperialist killing is to rid ourselves of our colonial society – which can only exist along with the war it propagates. The first step toward the end of global civil war is recognizing that it crosses every border and intersects every person.

Ethan Feldman is a U5 Philosophy student. He can be reached at ethan.feldman@gmail.com.

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Disrespect toward the broad array of individuals and groups who were interested and invested in the project serves little purpose other than as a teaching tool for elucidating the concept of “alienation.”

Ultimately, by negating all previous work on the project by executive decree, y’all play a significant and intentional role in undermining the development of autonomy in student affairs.

I believe that when deciding on the forms of activities and projects that are to be completed, one should ask if they help people gain more control over their lives. The cancellation of this project is antithetical to this radical goal and leads me to believe that you cannot be operating in the interests of your constituents, in general.

By your command, each and every hour volunteered by those in working groups organized by last year’s VP FOPS has been made wasted. I imagine that any student who involved themselves in unpaid labour did so under the impression that it would result in more than complete non-recognition.

Your first lesson in Marxist economics may reveal itself when you find it tough to develop and motivate new working groups under the spectre of flippancy and irreverence. Your second lesson, on the subject of friendship, will manifest itself as previously integral community members choose to find more rewarding things to do than develop business plans and write reports for a pack of wolf criers.

The argumentation offered inside the “official texts” (Tribune Newsblog Gossip Hotline September 21) seems to be completely empty – either operating toward the goal of pretending that there is no particular and specific interest for a student-run cafe, or simply using marketing buzz-phrases to illustrate complete submission to ideology.

This reminds me of the smoke-and-mirrors approach previously employed by the administration during the gifting of a campus monopoly to military-industrial food-commodity megacorp Aramark.

In that case, the admin used obtuse soundbites to obscure the obvious link between mass privatization of campus food services and the expropriation of the Architecture Cafe – a wildly successful and autonomous student space.

No matter how our local economist chooses to frame the situation, there is more at stake here than an “eighth food service” in the Shatner building, especially when all present food outlets under lease to us are decidedly bourgeois, with the Midnight Kitchen as the sole exception.

This is particularly relevant, as Liquid Nutrition has raised the price of coffee from 58 cents to $1.55 over 12 short months. Outrageous!

Plus, the scandalous contract with La Prep should not be reason to end this project. If our cafe can only sell samosas and non-specialty coffee until the contract ends – so be it! The real concern at hand here is student-controlled spaces and autonomy from corporate exploitation.

Students are willing to work within the boundaries which your institution imposes, but to cancel this project outright is short-sighted and misguided.

Now, if the confidentiality of the four-year long discussions between SSMU and the McGill admin with regards to the Memorandum of Agreement is the reason why there cannot be transparent relations between SSMU and the students, then it ought to be time to declare the Shatner building an ongoing occupation and defend it vigorously against the $1.5 million rent fees in negotiations.

*For the purpose of this polemic, I will assume that all efforts towards the development of a student-run café in the Shatner building has been halted.

Ethan Feldman is a U4 Philosophy student and a Known Student Radical. He can be reached at ethan.feldman@mail.mcgill.ca.

Have a response or something to say? The Commentary section of The Daily prints the opinions of students who submit pieces to us. We want to hear from a variety of voices on campus. To write a response to this article or to write an opinion piece of your own, email commentary@mcgilldaily.com.

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MUNACA has been on strike since September 1.

The annual Career Fair is open to all McGill students. Companies at the event included Imperial Tobacco, Bombardier Aerospace, L’Oreal, several banks and investment groups, among others.

Lorrie Quigg, MBA relationship manager at Desautels Career Services, spoke to The Daily about the event.

“We are typically at the front to make sure students make the best first impression that they can with employers,” Quigg said, mentioning “big badges,” “not appropriate hats,” and “the wrong kind of shoes” as the sorts of things they look out for.

Quigg stopped Patel, a U3 Management student, from entering the Career Fair.

“She basically said it was not appropriate to wear the pin and I told her that she should not be judging me by the pin that I am wearing,” said Patel.

Quigg said that it was Patel’s own admission that was the reaseon he was denied access to the event.

“[Corporations] pay to meet students who are looking for work,” she said. “He wasn’t looking for a job. That was not his intention to go, and I know because I specifically asked him.”

Patel said he was there “to see what corporations were there, as I am a Management student, and pick up any documents that may relate to my program.”

At this point, said Patel, Quigg conferred with a colleague and they gave him the choice of either taking off the MUNACA pin, or keeping it on and continuing to be denied entrance to the fair.

“Whatever you believe in, your cause is none of my business, and none of the employer’s business either,” Quigg said. “They’re not there for that, they’re there to talk about employment opportunities.”

Patel chose to leave, and said this was the first time he had ever been turned away from an event because of a pin.

“Ribbons, for example, for breast cancer or violence against women, I have worn to events like this and never been told to go away. I wear this MUNACA pin all the time and no one has ever said anything before,” he said.

“I think that it isn’t fair to say you aren’t political and then, to not let someone in because of a pin, is very political,” Patel said.

“I’m very disappointed and not content with the way that I was treated,” he continued.

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In late January and early February, four providers presented their systems to McGill professors, information-technology personnel, and Engineering Senator Andrew Doyle.

Doyle says that he was approached and asked to get involved because he was already actively searching for a method to collect student feedback on the IT systems.

“Basically, these vendor demos were a big opportunity for students to participate, ask questions, voice their concerns, give their feedback in the form of a survey we are compiling, but I think that asking students or anyone to come out for four hours to four different sessions is unrealistic,” he told The Daily.

“The best idea is that we get one student to attend all four and compare the systems. Realistically, no one has that kind of time, except me.”

While Doyle said he is the only student consistently involved, the LMS replacement selection committee has been seeking students’ involvement from the beginning.

“We learned from the food-systems project that the stakeholders didn’t really feel like they were consulted, even though the committee thought they were doing a good job,” Doyle said.

“In that case, decisions were made before the committee even met. There wasn’t really a place for students to participate in that project.”

Sharon Roy, director of Content and Collaboration Solutions and project manager of Moving Forward to select a new LMS, told The Daily that broad consultation is fundamental when it comes to executing such an enormous project that affects every part of the McGill community.

“We did interviews over the course of the year with 31 different faculties, students, and system staff members,” she said.

An extended list of requirements constructed from these meetings as well as surveys was sent to Learning Management System providers so that they would know what features were expected in a replacement for WebCT.

Roy said that there were countless requests for features that WebCT lacks. For example, many professors requested open content so that course material can be shared online, and crawled – an automated program that scans web pages and creates a index of specified data – by Google and other search engines.

Ken Ragan, McGill Physics professor and member of the selection committee, said that he is looking for tools that he thinks will generate more student discussion and participation.

“I’ve seen things that I won’t use, but that are cool. I can imagine that my colleagues would use them,” he said.

“There’s a core set of functions [that any LMS will] provide, but it’s the additional things they do, or the upgrade path, the support, and how knowledgeable [the software providers] are, that we are looking at for valuation.”

Doyle added that a major debate on the committee is whether or not to go with an open source solution. He says many people in the community, especially Computer Science students and staff, would like to have a system that can be adjusted and augmented. The problem is that most providers of open-source systems have an uninvolved and hands-off approach, which would require McGill to hire specialists to provide in-house support.

Ragan said that the goal is to choose the product that provides the highest quality and most consistent services to the McGill community.

“The committee has been explicitly told not to deal with cost; we are not given a budget to balance, that’s not our concern,” he said. “We’re trying to see which ones work and, ultimately, rank/order them to see which ones are below threshold and which ones are above it. By law, we can’t even think about dollars until we’ve gone through the process.”

In terms of student consultation Doyle stressed that the committee would benefit from greater student input.

“[The committee] asks me what students would think about certain features, or what students want in the system. I think I’ve done a good job, but it would have been nice to hear other voices.”

Students are encouraged to email andrew.doyle@mail.mcgill.ca or css@mcgill.ca and offer their opinions, positive or negative, about WebCT or possible replacement systems. Requests to poke around prototype versions of LMS candidates are strongly encouraged.

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The plan was opposed at the council meeting by over 80 citizen delegates who claimed that the environmental concerns are too grave, and that the proposal should be voted on by referendum this year. A citizen activist group called The Durham Environment Watch has been collecting signatures, and organizing events and demonstrations to protest the construction of the incinerator since 2005.

The Durham Environment Watch has gained the support of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the Durham Region Labour Council, the Canadian Labour Congress, and the Durham Regional Environmental Council, as well as Prevent Cancer Now, an organization whose goal is to do away with all preventable causes of cancer in Canada.

“Should we continue to buy local if the food that we grow and eat becomes contaminated with cancer-causing dioxins and other pollutants?” asks a flyer on the Durham Environment Watch’s web site. The site also includes links to over 300 letters to local newspapers regarding the construction of the incinerator. A group of 75 Durham doctors also petitioned unsuccessfully for the Durham Region Council to reject the incinerator.

CUPE-Ontario has publicly called out for district organizations to fight the toxic incinerator. CUPE- Ontario president Sid Ryan warned members of the dangers associated with constructing a power plant that emits noxious fumes within 10 kilometres of 20 schools. Ryan also warned that the corporation that will be appointed to build the power plant has a history of disrespecting regulations.

“Covanta, the American company that is the preferred vendor, has a record of safety and labour regulations violations in the U.S. that is a mile wide,” said Ryan.

In 1992, the NDP’s minister of environment, Ruth Grier, banned all construction of solid waste incinerators in Ontario due to environmental and health concerns. The incinerator ban was lifted on February 15, 1994, by Mike Harris’s Conservatives as part of the “Environmental Bill of Rights Act” which was intended to permit municipalities to open their decision-making processes to freely select any energy policy.

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When the vaccine was first released, the government demanded that only those who provide direct care to patients and those who are at very high risk receive the vaccine.

Despite these limitations, the Montreal Gazette reported on November 7 that 200 of the top donors to the Jewish General jumped the queue and received inoculations before they were eligible. Additionally, loose restrictions at Royal Victoria Hospital failed to prevent non-medical students from slipping into the line as early as two weeks ago.

According to Santé et Services sociaux Québec, the list of at-risk individuals who could receive the vaccine consists of pregnant women, chronically ill people under 65, children between six months and five years old, people living in remote or isolated locations or communities, health care workers, and people living with high risk patients who cannot be immunized, like babies under six months old and immune-compromised people. As of Friday, November 13, all Quebeckers under the age of 20 are eligible for the vaccine.

Wayne Wood, the head of McGill’s Pandemic Contingency Planning Committee, believed that the implementation of new policies and the distribution of sanitizer and information has already slowed the spread of H1N1 on campus.

“There has been a drop in the number of visits to the McGill Health Clinic, perhaps related to the self-reporting, which allows students to stay home and get well rather then go out and cause infections,” Wood said. “H1N1 is quite mild for most adults and young people, and they don’t really need medical attention.”

Wood said that one-seventh of the Quebec population has already been vaccinated, and that as this process speeds up, it becomes less likely that McGill’s day-to-day operations will slow to a halt.

Pierre-Paul Tellier, director of Student Health Services and director of the Office of Student Affairs for the Faculty of Medicine, told The Daily that he supports the government’s efforts to reduce risk and urges younger McGill students who are now eligible to be inoculated as soon as possible.

“As of [Friday], we are starting to immunize all those who are 19 and younger, so those students who are eligible can – and should – be vaccinated. This is good news because this date has been moved ahead by a week, so these students may all be fully protected by the time examination period begins,” Tellier said.

Tellier said he observed rigid application of the rules while at Place Alexis Nihon – the vaccination centre on Atwater where many McGill students are zoned to attend.

“They’re doing the vaccination according to risk, so those who are more likely to become fairly ill once they have become infected get the vaccine first. We have a list of diseases and immuno-suppressing medications that was given to us by the government,” Tellier said. “If a person comes in and requests the vaccination, but doesn’t have anything that is on that list, they are asked to come back at the time that they are supposed to be vaccinated.”

Tellier stressed that all McGill students should wait their turn rather than rushing to receive the rationed vaccine. “Skipping lines is natural human anxiety. However, the government has been very strict and been trying to apply the rules as stringently as possible to prevent the entire medical system from being overwhelmed.”

Two convenient clinics for McGill students are at Place Alexis Nihon at 1500 Atwater, or CLSC du Plateau-Mont-Royal at 4625 de Lorimier.

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Union members presented a petition with 2,400 signatures demanding that City Council recognize that students face financial barriers, regardless of their age, and that the policy be reversed.

Ottawa City Council voted unanimously to rescind the ruling. Each student over 28 is now eligible to purchase OC Transpo student passes – which equates to about $200 in savings a year.

Erik Halliwell, President of the Carleton University Student Association, told The Daily that convincing the non-student population to understand and support the student cause is the key to reversing discriminatory policy.

“Doing your best to make it a public issue is going to really help you in your fight. Councillors need to feel the heat sometimes in order to change,” Halliwell said.

In Montreal a student must be under the age of 25 in order to purchase student fares, while a student bus and subway pass in Toronto is only available to students between the ages of 13 and 19.

Montreal student unions are gearing up to take the issue to the City this year – in hopes that Montreal will follow Ottawa’s example.

SSMU VP External Sebastian Ronderos-Morgan told The Daily that removing the arbitrary age cap in Montreal is already one of his top priorities.

“We are going to demand that there is accessibility to the Metro Transit System for all students, specifically when it comes to reduced fares for passes, on a non-discriminatory basis – and that of course refers to the age cap,” Ronderos-Morgan said.

He was enthusiastic about cooperating with student unions from around the city in order to lobby candidates in the upcoming municipal elections, including groups from Université de Montréal, various CÉGEPs, as well as the Post Graduate Students’ Society of McGill University (PGSS).

In an email to The Daily, Ladan Mahabadi, Vice-President External of PGSS, said that the External Affairs Committee is currently pursuing a plan to develop a total transit pass for full-time students at McGill, similar to the Vancity U-Pass program which provides students with unlimited Translink access for $23.75 a month.

“It doesn’t seem like there is any justifiable reason for the age cap, outside of financial limitations that the STM might have, but financial constraints shouldn’t dictate whether policy is discriminatory or not,” Mahabadi said.

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Three panelists discussed net neutrality – broadband networks free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms – on Wednesday, in a talk organized by Flo Schade, U1 Industrial Relations and Vice President of the McGill chapter of Borderless World Volunteers.

Panelist Leslie Shade, associate professor of media studies and MA Program Director at Concordia University, admitted that a discussion revolving around packets and bits often makes the debate unappealing to the average person.

“How can you sex [net neutrality] up a bit? There’s so much technical information that it’s hard for most to get a grasp of why it’s an important issue,” Shade said.

The net neutrality debate centers on what rights ISPs – such as AT&T, Bell, and Videotron – have over the information transferred on their wires, which may restrict end-user’s right to equal access to Internet files.

As the Internet was developed to be an open, non-proprietary network, ISPs do not want to be classed as utilities, and claim their “tubes” are different from phone lines, electrical lines, and water pipes, which are more highly regulated due to their monopolistic nature.

If service providers have a right to discriminate against certain content through network management, the open principles of the Internet and rights to free speech may be at stake, said the panelists.

Professor Becky Lentz, assistant professor of media and public policy at McGill, believed that a clear definition of net neutrality is needed so that the regulators know what principles to enforce

“Non-net neutrality positions become a method of control,” Lentz said, pointing to ISPs’ stated necessity for filtering content to protect children or stop piracy. “We have to examine what they want to control and how they argue for the need to do that.“

Cameron McAlpine, account manager at Optimum Public Relations and former communications adviser to M2Z Networks – a company that lobbied unsuccessfully to transform the United States into a free wireless hotspot – focused on the network builders’ and operators’ argument that regulation is not necessary.

“Tiering creates a free speech problem,” McAlpine said. “But the AT&Ts and the Verizons of the world would say that the way to access the network is over their pipe, their wires, and they should be able to offer a range of services at a range of prices in order to cover the cost of building the system.”

Lentz also argued the physical telecommunication infrastructure required to connect users to the Internet raises questions about whether the Internet merely exists on computers, or in the wires that connect them together.

“Basically, it’s just devices connecting to a large network,” Lentz said. “Some of it is physical, some of it is virtual, and it’s important to know the details so you can understand whether the Internet is the ends, or the middle, or both.”

McAlpine argued that the ISPs are concerned with corporations like Google and Amazon that serve huge amounts of data and profit from the use of a physical infrastructure in which they invested no money.

“The ISPs don’t want your ten dollars; they want a piece of Google’s $100-million,” he said.

McAlpine drew laughs from the crowd as he highlighted how support for net neutrality crosses ideological lines.

“The Save the Internet Coalition’s two biggest proponents are The Christian Coalition and MoveOn.org. Try to get those two in a room together and see what happens.”

Lentz agreed that the issue is far more complex than the usual causes that garner student support on campus.

“You can’t look at this issue in the same way you might look at others. It doesn’t really fall on a conservative versus liberal spectrum,” she said.

The panel agreed with an audience member who stated that the average Member of Parliament or Senator has no idea that this is an issue they should be concerned with. The panel then discussed how three net neutrality bills have died when past Parliaments have dissolved.

“There is a big generational gap, I suspect, between the policy-makers and the youth who use the Internet on a daily basis,” said Shade.

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“Every technology has the potential to be used in really progressive ways and really negative ways, except for the nuclear bomb,” Parks said in an interview with The Daily. “I think Google Earth has the potential to provide anyone around the world with access to technology, the ability to input data and to have a voice in a global digital database.”

Parks, a visiting media and films study professor from University of California, Santa Barbara, discussed a project initiated by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in conjunction with Google Earth Outreach program, to add a Crisis in Darfur layer to the explosively popular Google Earth software, which had been downloaded over 200 million times at the time of the layer’s inclusion.

The Darfur layer provides georeferencing information for the region with stories, photos, and data aggregated from public domain sources, such as 900-page Amnesty International reports. For example, a photo layer links users to photos of people and events taken at the exact GPS location corresponding to where their curser lies on the screen, providing geophysical and political context.

Parks hypothesized that if used righteously, the burgeoning “Google Earth Effect” could revolutionize how the global community reacts to foreign events, comparing its potential to how televised news coverage moved the public to oppose the Vietnam War in the 1970s.

“Some say that CNN has played a role in shaping foreign policy at certain historical junctures. Let’s see if, when something happens in the world, instead of turning on CNN, people go to their computers and turn on Google Earth,” she postulated. “What would happen then, is that people could see what is going on directly from the multitude of voices who experience the event, rather than from CNN’s single verdict on the event.”

Although Parks recognized the added value that Google’s service provides, she criticized how Google claims ownership over public information. She felt its assertion of intellectual property over public information and methods of controlling what information is accessible through Google Earth usurps the potential to demystify our planet’s surface in favour of corporate profit.

“The image may be blurred or undated, but the Google brand is never lost,” she said. “My concern is that because of the intellectual property laws and the dominant position of Google in the global digital economy, there is a tendency for Google to set the parameters and structures of who can participate in Google Earth as well.”

Parks is visiting McGill between March 3 and 17 as a Beaverbrook Scholar in Residence. She was invited by Media@McGill, which is an academic group comprised of the faculty of McGill’s Department of Art History and Communications Studies along with other prominent Canadian scholars of media studies. As part of her time at McGill, Parks has been giving guest lectures, meeting with students about their research, and polishing off her new works regarding Google Earth and the digital TV transition.

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The complaint, issued in a resolution, based its call for immediate action on Elections McGill’s failure to meet SSMU standards on bilingualism, insufficient promotional activities and campaign oversight, inaccuracies in print materials, and inaccessibility to election candidates and referendum committee members. The censure came the night before advance polls opened for the present SSMU election.

Kay Turner, President of SSMU, believed that a public censure was necessary to avert disaster before the election.

“The best way to rectify these problems is to call them on it publicly so that it is incredibly clear what we want from them. We wanted to actively insert ourselves into the situation rather than do a post-mortem,” she said, explaining that Elections McGill still had time to fix their malpractices before the current election period ended.

But Nicole Gileadi, Chief Executive Officer of Elections McGill and U2 Political Science student, stated in a bilingual press release sent to The McGill Daily and Le Délit that the resolution was completely unprecedented and unprofessional.

“Instead of speaking to us on an individual level – the way that it is normally done between Elections McGill and SSMU Council – they chose to pass this motion in a confidential session, which means that we don’t have access to the minutes, we weren’t invited to be there, we didn’t have an opportunity to respond to their allegations,” said Gileadi later in an interview with The Daily. “We learned about this at 3:30 in the morning, after the fact, after it had been made public.”

She described the charges as baseless and could not understand how SSMU could justify a public shaming.

“The claims they made are unfounded. [The censure] makes an implication that, as an office, Elections McGill refuses to do its job and refuses to improve, which has never been the case. A public censure should be reserved for situations in which all other avenues have been exhausted. We were given no notice before this resolution passed.”

Controversy erupted earlier this year when Elections McGill was accused of not providing proper French editions of emails and other documents. Gileadi said she has been working to be inclusive to francophone McGill students who have been ignored in the past, citing the introduction of bilingual posters, emails, and ads, which Elections McGill did not distribute in the past. Their web site and all other documentation are scheduled to be translated by the end of the academic year.

“Based on our track record, Elections McGill has given no precedent for Council to believe that we would not rectify any concerns brought directly to our attention,” said Gileadi.

Elections McGill an independent and impartial agency of SSMU, meaning that SSMU’s resolution cannot forcibly instruct the service on what action should be taken. Turner acknowledged Gileadi’s endeavours, but said that more could be done to improve upon current conduct.

“Elections McGill has actually already rectified most of the bilingual issues, but the other issues refer to Elections McGill not having a great response time to phone calls and emails from the candidates, and that’s something which can be easily rectified, for example.”

Turner maintained that her primary concern was a formally-run election, and denied that SSMU wholly objected to Elections McGill’s present work.

“Council takes issue with some of the decisions and actions of Elections McGill, but this doesn’t indicate a complete or partial lack of confidence in our electoral body.”

Gileadi was adamant that the censure is unwarranted and is going to remain focused on the election.

“We’re going to table this and focus on our job, because we think that it is an unfortunate distraction from having the election.”

The post SSMU slaps Elections with public censure appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Although Montreal’s 172 daytime bus routes stopped running at the usual time – around 1:30 a.m., with some routes ending earlier or only running on weekdays – the STM’s underground subway service ran in tandem with 20 night bus lines throughout the night, the third time in the metro’s 43-year history.

Marvin Rotrand, vice-chairman of the STM board of directors, highlighted the significance of providing all night metro service in a press release.

“Throughout its long history, the metro has stayed open all night only twice. The first time was during the storm of the century, March 4, 1971, while the second time was for the countdown to the year 2000. I can tell you without hesitation that allowing the metro to run all night is truly an exceptional gesture, any way you look at it,” Rotrand said.

The STM also leased 15 buses at a special low price to shuttle festival patrons from one location to another. The metro stations themselves also became attractions, providing many local artists space for art installations.

Margaret Miller, National President of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Canada, thought the all night service provided an important alternative to the drowsy festival patrons.

“Whenever a service becomes available to someone who has been drinking, it gives them more options, and when people have other options, they make use of them and don’t drive,” she said.

Miller felt Montreal’s roads could be much safer if the nighttime services were expanded or offered more frequently, because it would reduce the chances that intoxicated drivers are behind the wheel.

“The easier we make it for them to get a safe ride home, the less likely they are to be behind the wheel. More options prevents deaths and injuries because people don’t have to make alternate arrangements or take risks.”

The STM normally performs maintenance on the aging metro stations, tunnels, and cars, mostly when the metro and daytime bus system is closed – starting between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m., depending on the station, route, and day, and ending around 5:30 a.m. The nighttime bus network, originally designed for employees to reach their starting locations and then opened to the public in 1988, runs 20 routes while the metro and daytime bus system is closed, mostly on intervals of 45 to 60 minutes.

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Its critics, however, aren’t just riled up because it raises political questions about the Middle East; instead, they think the entire motion is unconstitutional, and are holding SSMU Speaker Jordan Owens responsible.

Mushfia Ahmed, U1 Electrical Engineering, felt like this resolution alone may not have a substantive effect on Israel’s policy, but SSMU’s condemnation could be one of many messages of disapproval broadcast by the global community.

“If it passes now, it is almost useless, especially after the end of military operations, but each condemnation adds up,” Ahmed said. “If no one speaks out, [Israel] may not reconsider their actions next time. SSMU is one more voice…. This [should not be] forgotten completely.”

Zachary Newburgh, U2 Honours Middle East Studies, criticized the resolution because the preamble states that Israel has deliberately targeted and razed hospitals, United Nations-funded compounds, and educational institutions, without any mention that the buildings may have been used by Hamas militants as bases of operations or as launching pads for weapons.

Newburgh, along with a large assortment of McGill students and campus organizations, including Hillel McGill, felt that taking such a political stance would not be productive in an academic environment.

“There are students on campus that are considering pursuing legal action, [through the Judicial Board], in order to retract this resolution and ensure that McGill remains a safe place for all students,” Newburgh said. “SSMU, by allowing such a resolution to come before the General Assembly, willfully isolates, marginalizes, and makes students at McGill University feel unwelcome.”

Owens, however, disagreed. She pointed out that SSMU has historically taken stances on external political issues in this manner.

“Through the General Assembly, SSMU took a stance on both the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. My reading of the constitution is that there should be free and open dialogue about policy and the General Assembly is the forum for that,” she said.

Newburgh also pointed to the unconstitutional nature of the motion. In an email to the Speaker, and CC-ed to SSMU President Kay Turner, The Daily, and other campus publications, Newburgh explained several potential violations, such as Article 22, which states, “SSMU Council will not take a position on external political issues that Council deems to be extremely divisive among students at McGill University.”

He attributed the potential violation to Owens’s negligence.

“The SSMU Speaker has unequivocally chosen to violate the constitution and thereby infringe upon the rights of all those who fit under SSMU,” said Newburgh. “The job of the SSMU Speaker is to make sure that all resolutions that are submitted to the General Assembly don’t violate the constitution.”

Corey Shefman, SSMU Speaker in 2006-2007, also held Owens responsible.

“The Speaker of Council has the authority to reject motions that are not in line with the SSMU Constitution,” he told The Daily in a telephone interview from Wales. “Even here in the UK, I’ve heard about the protests going on at McGill, and with that in mind, it is obviously a divisive issue.”

Shefman came under scrutiny at the February 2007 GA when he ruled two blood-drive motions were unconstitutional, thereby refusing to let the issue be discussed. The highly-divided assembly tried to appeal the ruling, but eventually a slim majority voted to uphold the Speaker’s ruling.

Owens, however, defended herself, explaining that impartiality is a necessary virtue for a Speaker to possess.

“It’s not the role of the Speaker to decide whether or not a discussion should take place. SSMU has no opinion on the matter right now, and that is for the General Assembly to decide,” she said.

VP Clubs & Services Samantha Cook also thought the motions do not violate the Constitution and that neither the Speaker nor SSMU have done any harm to the school environment.

“I am familiar with Corey Shefman, but every speaker has a different way of looking at and interpreting the Constitution,” said Cook. “It is a living document, and its interpretation is a product of the times.”

Shefman, however, downplayed how representative the GA is in matters of this divisive nature.

“Dividing the student body like this is not a good idea, especially not by 600 out of 20,000 students,” said Shefman.

“If this is a question that really needs to be asked, ask the whole student body in an online vote.”

The GA will be held in the Shatner Cafeteria at 4 p.m. on Thursday. Maximum capacity for the cafeteria, with chairs and tables removed, is around 675 people.

The post Gaza motion sparks constitutional controversy appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Hundreds of members from the McGill University Non-Academic Certified Association (MUNACA) responded to a January 21 executive bulletin urging members to prove the seriousness of their cause by using the Open House to draw attention to their search for a collective agreement with the University.

“Let us show the University that we are willing to give up our time on a Sunday to demonstrate how unhappy we are with the state of negotiations,” said Maria Ruocco, the union president.

The demonstrators picketed the Roddick Gates between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. and the demonstration was covered by CTV News at 6 p.m.

“It was to expose ourselves, we just want to make more people aware of our cause,” said Ruocco.

Mookie Kideckel, U1 History student and Daily contributor, volunteered at the Open House for the History faculty and witnessed the demonstration.

“I thought they were on strike when I first saw them, but they were just demonstrating,” said Kideckel. “They were walking in circles. I didn’t know what it was, but I got closer [I noticed] it was MUNACA. Cars were honking, [but] it seemed friendly.”

MUNACA has been searching for a new collective agreement with the University for the past 13 months. The union now has a mandate from its members to use pressure tactics up to and including a general strike. The University has promised to keep open the services that MUNACA employees operate in the event of a strike, although it has noted that some services will be scaled back. Both the University and MUNACA employ a negotiator who is working with a third-party conciliator to reach a settlement.

Ruocco stressed that McGill and the union have long agreed on every point in negotiation except salary increases.

“Basically, all we want are fair wage increases. We’re hoping that the University comes back to the table with a fair proposal.”

Where the Univesity is currently offering 8.5 per cent over three years, MUNACA is requesting ten per cent.

According to McGill Human Resources’s web site, budget constraints are complicating an agreement with MUNACA’s demands.

“It is important to note that Quebec universities, including McGill University, are facing significant budget deficits which the Ministry of Education has directed must be eliminated within the next three years,” reads their web site.

Neither McGill Human Resources nor the MUNACA web site have updated details regarding the negotiations since December.

But Ruocco said that their message has not changed.

“We want a fair collective agreement and that’s always been the message that we’re giving the administration.”

The post MUNACA crashes McGill’s open house appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Applause and cheers rang as Halper stood to speak.

Halper blamed Israeli tribal nationalism and a belief in exclusive ownership of land as the reasons why peace remains so elusive, likening “this is our land, but you can live here too” attitude to nationalist periods seen in Germany, Poland, Russia.

“Think of ‘The Motherland, The Homeland!’ People say Israel is a Western democracy, but it isn’t,” Halper said. “Zionism comes out of Eastern Europe, not Western Europe.”

Halper also claimed that this “doctrine of the permanent enemy” guides Israelis to assume that Arabs want to kill them, and thus that there is no political solution.

“Israel is a military state. It is run by generals and Israel has set up a set of parameters that make peace impossible,” Halper said.

Halper then used his “doctrine” to argue Hamas is the only group capable of protecting Palestinians from Israel, concluding that as a result armed resistance is legitimate according to international law.

Halper stopped once during his presentation and allowed a question to be asked by an upset Israeli, which was met with a raucous response from the audience – including one student who tactfully turned around, shouted, and dramatically mimed “zip-it-up.”

Halper concluded his presentation by claiming that the world was forgetting Palestinians and turning them into “surplus humanity” by apathy.

He proposed the abandonment of the two-state concept and a focus on a single-state solution, an option on neither party’s radar. He noted Israel has historically come to the negotiating table expecting to walk away with everything.

“I hope my message wasn’t a ‘down’ message, but there cannot be a win/lose resolution.”

Grey’s discussion preceded Halper. He felt Canadians have been far too passive in human rights activism, explaining that “safe” human rights activists avoid controversy– such as language laws and labour issues in Canada, and the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

“Human rights are quite useless if not accompanied by courage,”Grey said.

Grey implied Israel’s recent action in Gaza has darker Machiavellian undertones.

“Condemning the invasion is in the interest of Israel,” added Grey.

He found any real resolution to be in the hands of Israel’s government, who he said needs to step away from policies of hate and war. He then outlined how Canadian action can speed up that process.

Representatives from QPIRG and IJV claimed McGill tried to censor the event when it demanded an additional $250 for security on the day of the talk. The audience was asked for further donations to cover the unexpected cost.

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MUNACA President Maria Ruocco explained that the union – which represents over 1,800 non-academic workers at McGill – and the University are still at odds about salary increases.

“The University is not budging, salary is the only outstanding issue,” said Ruocco, adding that shift premiums and job security measures are some of the other issues resolved during negotiation.

During a General Assembly (GA) held December 4, 65 per cent of GA attendees voted to give MUNACA the mandate to use pressure tactics, up to and including a general strike. The union has been in contract negotiations for 13 months, and held a series of demonstrations last semester.

The strike mandate followed a motion where 68 per cent of members rejected McGill’s December 1 salary offer. In October, MUNACA also rejected McGill’s proposed 12 per cent salary increase over four years, saying they would not accept an offer below 13 per cent over the same time frame. Negotiations are now considering shorter time frames. Currently, MUNACA is requesting ten per cent over three years, with scale and progression, while McGill is presently offering a paltry 8.5 per cent.

Ruocco said MUNACA was not being unreasonable in their pay demands.

“I don’t think we’re being outrageously demanding, compared to other universities. Our thing is ‘Why is our work not worth the same as at other universities?’” she said, pointing to a similar union at Concordia which was offered a 20 per cent pay increase over four years. “We’re here to contribute to the University and we want them to recognize what we’re doing.”

In the event of a general strike – which MUNACA hopes to avoid, and publicly explained in full page ads placed in the December 20 editions of The Gazette, Le Devoir, and La Presse – Ruocco was uncertain about what it could mean for life at McGill.

“Students will suffer in the end. I don’t believe management can keep up with the same work at the level they do it now,” she said, highlighting the role MUNACA workers play at the University. “Professors are aided in everything they do: course materials, exams, timetabling for classes, timetables for exams, also technicians who help researchers…. Nurses would not be able to help or substitute doctors when students come in and they’re not healthy.”

SSMU VP External Devin Alfaro predicted that in the case of a general strike, schedules would be shortened and certain services may be limited, although many would keep operating at some level.

“Not everyone who works in a lab or library is MUNACA. Only the technicians would strike, so basic tasks could still be done,” Alfaro said.

In an email sent to The Daily, Associate Vice-Principal (Human Resources) Lynne Gervais wrote that she could not legally discuss negotiations and played down what effects a strike could have.

“The administration has taken steps to keep the University functioning in the event of a strike or [in the event] other pressure tactics are employed, but we continue to work to arrive at a settlement, as we have all along,” Gervais explained.

Ruocco claimed that MUNACA has not heard from McGill since its members rejected McGill’s offer in early December, and worried that they were being treated with the same attitude McGill commanded in their dispute with AGSEM, the graduate students’ union, during the teaching assistant (TA) strike.

“We are very worried about scab workers,” said Ruocco. “The issue is in the hands of our lawyers, and they’re looking in to it. If it means sending inspectors like the TAs had to, then we must.”

Alfaro added that McGill’s attitude toward unions has led to continual impasses in negotiations.

“In general, McGill has a very heavy handed way of dealing with unions on campus. This has led to reoccurring problems with labour disputes because of the general attitude that the McGill administration takes,” Alfaro said.

He suspected that this attitude stems from a shrinking budget and mistaken priorities.

“McGill is very much underfunded. There is a lack of investment, especially on the public side. McGill wants to keep prominent faculty members, and the public intellectuals on staff, and they do want to take care of them. They treat support staff, like TAs as more expendable. It’s here that McGill tries to save costs. McGill has tried to get unions to back down, rather than have honest discussions.”

Gervais instead pointed to multiple negotiations with unions, and didn’t state that underfunding affected salary shifts.

“We have had two somewhat difficult negotiation processes this year because of the coincidence of contract expirations, but we don’t feel this represents any particular pattern or is out of the ordinary.”

She referenced how McGill was named one of Canada’s Top 100 employers and that recent contract disputes are an anomaly.

“We feel our relationships with the unions that represent McGill workers are good in general,” Gervais said.

Ruocco was hopeful that negotiations would soon end.

“Basically, the McGill population should know that MUNACA, MUNACA executives, and the negotiating committee just want a fair deal for our members and our share of what is owed to us,” she said.

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