Okay. Embarrassing. I know. Crying in a Forever 21 – really? Standing on the sparkly stairs and being stared at by groups of mothers and their twelve-year-old daughters walking by? Not exactly a shining moment in my life.

I’d arrived at this point because I’d been eyeing beautiful long-sleeved sheer tops on the internet all summer. I knew that I wanted one and I also knew that my local Value Village would not fit the bill for this purchase. So this trip was about finding that perfect black button down. I loaded my arms with cheap shirts and skirts and dresses (because no one can resist a sundress for $6), and made my way to the dressing room. My sister had recently come back from a year in Berlin with probably less than $10 to her name, so she had decided that she would shop vicariously through me. When I walked out of the changing rooms with my head down and handed all my items back to the garishly dressed girl at the rack, my sister was pretty unimpressed.

The thing is, I am not skinny; I never have been and probably never will be. I’ve spent a pretty long time coming to terms with this but sometimes it really blows, and trying on top after top that refused to button over my boobs was one of those times. There was my sister – the ultimate McGill hipster, the reticent victim of CampuSPOT photo shoots, and someone who sends me Facebook messages laughing hysterically about being photographed for someone’s blog – and then there’s me, the girl who doesn’t fit a size ‘large’ at Forever 21.

Walking down some stupid sparkly steps in the store, my sister suggested that we check the plus-sized section and I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. Never in my life have I seen myself as plus-sized. Yes, I always had boobs and hips and thighs, but I never thought that this meant I could never fit into what society deems a ‘normal’ size. How could I deal with the fact that I needed to shop in a ‘special’ section because I was so ‘abnormally’ large? The worst part was that I was in America – the land of the free and the ‘home of obesity’ – and I was being told that I didn’t fit into their largest size. Are you kidding me?

My sister’s response couldn’t have been more wonderful – “Fuck the patriarchy!” As much as she has the power to make me feel terribly inferior – the younger sibling complex in full effect – she knew just what to say to make me feel better. Fuck the patriarchy, and the patriarchs who run the fashion industry and choose arbitrary clothing sizes to categorize our bodies. Fuck this stupid store that told me that I was wrong and different and that I didn’t fit.

My love affair with outlet malls is far from over, but I may just have grown out of my love affair with Forever 21. I’ll place it on file with the Claire’s and Rue 21s of my tween years and say a final ‘fuck you’ before walking out those glass doors for good.

I’m moving on and deciding that just because Forever 21 made me want to crawl out of my skin for shame doesn’t mean that there is anything wrong with me. I walked into that plus-sized section and found a sweet pair of leather shorts only to learn that they did not fit either. So, apparently I exist only in that weird parallel universe between what is ‘normal’ and what I have always been taught to see as ‘fat.’ I’m just going to have to let the fact that I can’t get the buttons to do up on that shirt that will surely fall apart in the wash stop defining me. I’m learning that maybe I’m not the problem. Maybe the problem is Forever 21 and their absurdly unrepresentative sizing, and a world that tells women that if they want to be beautiful they need to fit into a constantly changing standard of perfection. So I’m saying to everyone, “Fuck the patriarchy,” stop hating yourself, hate Forever 21 instead.

Hannah Sinclair is a U2 History and English student. She can be reached at hannah.sinclair@mail.mcgill.ca.

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The event, which is being coordinated by the Office for Students with Disabilities, is part of the office’s ongoing attempts to foster awareness of students with disabilities on campus while creating a safe space to discuss issues involving those with varied abilities.

Kicking off the week, principal Monroe- Blum sent an email to students. According to Monroe-Blum, “Highlighting access to learning, diversity, engagement and inclusion is a central focus for our University and the goal of this campaign is to showcase these values and some of the means of expressing these on our campuses.”

Disabilities Awareness Week will see a number of events across campus. Today, for example, “Connecting the dots: a panel on mental health” will take place from 4-6 p.m. in the Lev Bukhman room. The panel will discuss the mental illness issues that face university students, and what can be done to support those students.

Besides panels – which will cover issues like Asperger Syndrome, mental health in Native communities, and the criminal justice system’s attitude toward Mental Health – a number of kiosks will be set up throughout the week. These kiosks will be located in the Brown Building, and will host organizations like fit@mcgill and the Eating Disorders Clinic.

For a full list of events, see the Office of Students with Disabilities calendar of events at http://mcgillosd.blogspot.com/p/event-listings.html

-with files from Peter Shyba

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Every year, a new batch of medical students enters the hospital system to develop the skills required to become competent physicians. Residents, doctors completing their obligatory postgraduate training in the field of their choice, are a crucial part of that learning process. Along with tending to patients during their seventy hour plus work weeks, they double as teachers and mentors. However, with the residents now abstaining from teaching, Quebec medical students are left wondering how their education will be affected.

Negotiations with the government have been sluggish since the expiration of the last collective agreement in March 2010. The residents’ primary demand is a pay adjustment aimed at bringing their salaries up to par with those of their peers in other provinces. The annual salary of Quebec’s residents is currently 37 per cent below the national average. One way they are looking to decrease the pay gap is with a teaching premium, a demand the government has ignored. In response to this lack of attention regarding the value of their teaching duties, the residents have decided to stop teaching.

“Our question was how to have our demands heard so that the government would take us seriously,” explained Dr. Joseph Dahine, the president of the Residents Association of McGill. “And during brainstorming sessions and general assemblies, we decided to suspend teaching activities, though it was not an easy decision.”
With their demands, residents contend that they are not solely looking for a pay increase.

“Why are we fighting for this? We’re not doing it out of greed,” said Dahine. “We’re doing this so that in 5, 10, 20 years, we are not faced with an even worse shortage of physicians or less well-trained physicians. By getting better working conditions and eliminating the salary discrepancy we can attract the best doctors in North America here and keep our own residents here in Quebec.”

However, the medical students feel they are caught in the crossfire. They sympathize with the residents’ demands, but feel strongly that any tactic which jeopardizes their education is inappropriate.

“Under normal circumstances, it is the residents who teach us the nuts and bolts of how to function in the hospital,” explained Sameer Apte, President of the McGill Medical Class of 2013. “If this teaching strike continues for too much longer, it will mean that the future physicians of Quebec will be less well trained than their predecessors. We will be less confident in managing patient illness, and we will be less efficient in how we use medical resources.”
In the meantime, medical students are being taught by staff physicians, doctors who have completed all required postgraduate training. This is not enough to fully compensate for the absence of residents because staff physicians already have a full load of patients to care for and regular teaching obligations.

“Students are getting better quality teaching directly from staff, but the quantity of patients they’re seeing is less,” said Dr. Robert Primavesi, Associate Dean of Medical Education and Student Affairs. “I think what the students feel they’re missing out most on is integration and learning how to function in the hospital environment.”

According to Natacha Joncas-Boudreau, a press aide to Health Minister Yves Bolduc, the government wants to reach an agreement as quickly as possible, a sentiment the residents share. However, the residents have yet to receive an offer they deem satisfactory. Joncas-Boudreau insisted that patient care is not affected, but that may change if the residents take further action in the form of a general strike.

A general strike is on the table, but the residents hope it won’t come to that. “Nobody is interested in a prolonged strike or a general strike,” said Dahine. “After all, we love working with patients, we love working with students and we love to teach. That’s why we’re here.”

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The service-learning team at the Choices in Health, Action, Motivation, Pedagogy, and Skill (CHAMPS) lab of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute argue that these lost opportunities for learning are too costly. ADHD affects between 2 to 14 per cent of school-aged children, with 50 per cent experiencing difficulties in academic achievement.

Under the direction of William Harvey, the CHAMPS lab aims to increase self-control in young children with ADHD by using a more positive teaching approach to behaviour management. On Saturday mornings, a group of 8 to 10 children between 6 to 12 years old gather at the Douglas for two hours of physical activity led by student teachers from McGill’s department of Kinesiology and Physical Education.

Meanwhile, their parents take part in psychoeducation sessions with a Douglas social worker and psychiatric nurse. Parents acquire the necessary tools to effectively communicate and aid their child in coping with ADHD, such as learning how to use language understandable by both parent and child, or “mutual language.”

Harvey, an assistant professor of Kinesiology and Physical education, and formerly a Douglas physical educator and department head, has been enthusiastic about the program results. “There are so many levels of learning in our project. Children are learning how to play, parents learning how to play and communicate better with their child, and student teachers are bringing positive behaviour management techniques into the schools of Montreal.”

Approximately two years before the start of the program, Harvey’s lab found a significant link between the fundamental movement skills of children with ADHD versus those without ADHD. Children with ADHD had been found to have a significantly lower proficiency for movement skill patterns like running, hopping, skipping, catching, and kicking, in contrast to age- and gender-matched peers without the disorder.

What ensued was the impetus to redefine a physical activity intervention method for children with ADHD. In 2003, Harvey had created a social skills training model to teach behavioural control in physical activity, utilizing the unique benefit of mutual language to develop and hone these skills. At the Douglas sessions, student teachers reinforce language based on the model’s rules, which state that if you are “responsible” and “respectful,” meaning you are in “self-control”. If you are in self-control, then you can “participate.” Defining these terms is the key element of the model. To quote a ten-year-old participating in the program, respect means “don’t give anyone any lip.”

Joey Feith, one of Harvey’s former student teachers, put the model into action when he taught at École Secondaire de Chambly, south-east of Montreal: “I always try to include the model in my teaching, it really makes a difference when classes get a bit out of control, and they can actually tell me what behaviours they need to exhibit to be able to participate.” Feith added, “one thing I realized while teaching in the program is that these little kids are going through a lot in their lives, and when a child comes into your gym, you’re only seeing one side of them. I always think of this when I am teaching, it’s helped me always remember that you’re really only seeing the tip of the iceberg.”

Service-learning programs, such as this one, can be helpful for the numerous children with ADHD in schools, their families and professional educators in the field. For teachers like Harvey and Feith, the gains in self-control can be translated back to school and home. Enacting positive behaviour management methods can help a child remain in the classroom, and avoid those robbed learning opportunities while sitting in the principal’s office.

The CHAMPS lab is seeking volunteers for various annual programs.  To get involved, contact William Harvey at william.harvey@mcgill.ca.

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Until recently, grief has maintained a foothold in the realm of human emotion largely untouched by the world of psychiatry. Grief, mourning, and bereavement were seen as natural human reactions to trauma and tragedy. When encountered in a clinical context, grief was understood as an extended manifestation of existing disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder or Major Depressive Disorder. However, many psychiatrists, such as Mardi J. Horowitz at the University of California, San Francisco have argued that extreme grieving is a pathological disorder that requires crucial medical and therapeutic treatment. While the debate continues as to how to define and diagnose pathological grief, a greater question emerges: why are we so keen on defining grief as a disorder in the first place?

Leeat Granek is a Toronto-based critical psychologist who specializes in grief and loss and has been at the forefront of a movement toward re-thinking our perceptions of and attitudes toward grief in the North American context. Granek suggests that rather than focus on definitions of what is “normal” and “abnormal” when it comes to grieving, we should be more concerned with what the desire to pathologize grief reflects about our societal beliefs and attitudes. “Many of the mental illnesses in the DSM are social constructions that are based on the cultural zeitgeist at the moment,” said Granek. “We already live in a culture that is intolerant of grief and loss in general. The message is often, ‘You need to move on, you need to see someone.’” The inclusion of pathological grief as a clinical diagnosis would serve to reinforce the perception of grief as a problematic, rather than a natural human reaction to loss and bereavement.

Granek’s concerns over the inclusion of grief in the DSM stretch beyond the realm of negative societal perceptions and attitudes. Grieving has traditionally been done in tight-knit communities made up of family, friends, and close community-members. In recent years, these support networks have shrunk or largely disappeared, which has changed the way individuals are able to grieve. Granek explains what is happening is a “diagnostic creep” which has meant that more and more people are being screened for grief “disorder.” Indeed, as Granek pointed out, anyone who has ever experienced a loss or grief falls into that purview, and can face diagnosis. As grief becomes an increasingly common diagnosis of disorder, human experiences are relegated to the institutionalized sphere: the offices of therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. “There is less space for grief and loss, and less space for tolerance in our culture,” said Granek. Indeed, the doctor’s office has taken the place of community rituals and traditions that in the past created space and support for grief and mourning.

But Granek is hopeful, and with good reason. In mid-February, she held a number of meetings at York University in Toronto and the City University of New York with a wide range of individuals including clinicians, healthcare workers and community activists who work in the area of grief and loss to discuss alternatives to pathologization. The aim was to generate discussion drawn from on-the-ground experiences of people with a variety of perspectives and backgrounds. Granek emphasizes the need for a “multiplicity of voices” when it comes to the field of grief and the ultimate need for more dialogue in order to narrow the space between research and the human experience.

In describing the outcomes of her meetings, one of the only things that everyone could agree on, said Granek, is that grief is complex and diverse – indeed, as is the depth and capacity of human emotion.

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A strategy known as “Seek and Treat,” pioneered at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, aims to seek out individuals with a high risk of becoming HIV-positive, and begins aggressive and early use of anti-retroviral treatment, as opposed to the earlier method of only treating individuals once they display symptoms of AIDS. This was facilitated by the development of new anti-retroviral drugs in the last five years that act on several parts of the virus and on different phases in its growth cycle, preventing patients from forming resistances – as occurred with the older drugs.

With early anti-retroviral treatment, not only is the quality of life of the patient improved, but his or her viral load is dramatically reduced. Notably, this means that the chance of infecting others is also lessened.  For every ten-fold reduction in the viral load of a population, an analysis of trends in BC found that the number of new HIV cases declined by 14 per cent.

For treatment to actively prevent the spread of HIV, however, those who are infected must know their status and have access to early treatment.  In Canada, it is estimated that a quarter of people living with HIV have not been tested, and only about half of those who tested are receiving treatment, according to the Globe and Mail.  While “Seek and Treat” aims to reduce this number by targeting high-risk populations through aggressive testing campaigns, the focus is slowly shifting to promoting testing in the general population, rather than just those deemed high risk.

This change in focus is due to recognition that the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS limits treatment. Mona Loutfy, head of the Women and HIV research program at Women’s College Research Institute at the University of Toronto, has focused her research on issues of stigma and the treatment of HIV in women. “Stigma is one of the most important issues we face in all aspects of HIV care and prevention,” she explained.

Loutfy explained that stigma exists in two forms: symbolic stigma, the fear that people will associate one’s condition with the old stereotypes of HIV as a result of reckless sexual practices or drug use, and internalized stigma, when one begins to believe and internalize these stereotypes. The experience of either stigma can lead one to avoid getting tested. “If people don’t get tested, they end up getting care later in the progression of the disease,” said Loutfy.

The World Health Organization’s guidelines advise that treatment should begin when CD4 counts – the measure of HIV’s progress in destroying immune system cells – dip below 350 parts/microlitre. Normal levels are 600-1200, with treatment ideally beginning at 500. Despite this Loutfy has found that many Canadians are not receiving treatment until their counts are below 200.  At this level, the virus is already considered to have progressed to AIDS, and treatment success rates are much lower.

The problem, as Loutfy sees it, has not only to do with stereotypes in the general public, but also with problems within the medical system.  “HIV-patients are very likely to receive stigma in their treatment, particularly in clinics outside the major downtown centres.”

For example, “many clinics will treat Hepatitis patients but will refuse to treat HIV-positive patients, or quarantine them if they do, even though the risks are the same,” Loutfy said. A 2010 paper by Loutfy exploring the perception of stigma in HIV-positive women found a correlation between reports of experiencing high levels of stigma with negative encounters with a health care professional.  There is a worry that many HIV-positive patients could be driven to avoid the regular monitoring needed to ensure successful treatment.

Stigma becomes even more  entrenched when it comes to issues of family planning.  “When properly treated,” Loutfy explained, “the chances of HIV transmission from a mother to her child [prior to and after childbirth], or from one sexual partner to another, has been reduced to well below one per cent.”  However, “there are only five fertility clinics in Canada – four in Ontario, one in Alberta – that offer full fertility services to women infected with HIV. The majority of Canadians with HIV have no access to fertility services.”

Royal Orr, co-founder of Highlands Hope of Tanzania, a McGill-affiliated umbrella group that supports the work of nurses in HIV clinics in one of the country’s most effected regions, has also worked with this issue.

“I’ve been surprised when speaking to Canadian audiences by how negatively they react when they hear we are helping people with HIV to safely have babies,” Orr said.  “At the base of this reaction is the presumption that if you have HIV, you’re toxic and you’re expected to swear off being a sexual and reproductive being.”

Orr worked extensively in the early years of AIDS in Tanzania, combating the stigma preventing people from getting tested.  “Those were the years of ACT UP,” a reference to the direct action AIDS-advocacy group founded in the U.S. in the late 1980s.  “There was a lot of anger and we believed change could only happen if we stood up against the institutions that were failing to deliver proper services.”

But now, as institutions have begun to respond and HIV has become more manageable, he sees that the strategies for fighting stigma are changing. “What we see now is a slow, patient, nose to the grind approach of tireless, fearless advocates within the system.”

The problem seems to be one of education.  “People don’t know that sex and reproduction can be safe if you have HIV and properly treat it,” explained Orr.  He mentioned that it is an especially tricky pronouncement to make for the medical profession, because of the worry of leading to more risky behaviour.

At this, he recalled that on his first experience meeting an HIV-positive family in Tanzania planning to have children, he was initially taken aback. “But then, I thought,” he says enthusiastically, “Of course! Why shouldn’t these people have a family if they want?”

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Indeed, of the many “Other” places in the world, Africa has perhaps been most often projected as that “Other”. Since colonial times, the continent and its people have been constructed and positioned as decidedly exotic in our Western imagination. Contemporary Africa has become iconized by images of disease, famine, war, and conflict, which have served to reinforce its “exoticization” as the inverse to a  North American lifestyle. Whether envisioned as permanently primordial for the sake of foreign control, or pictured as the “dark continent” in dire need of aid and assistance, Africa’s alterity has ultimately become its own attraction.

Sparing the descent into a tired diatribe on the legacy of colonial history and the imperative need for cultural sensitivity when visiting these “Other” places, I would like to explore an issue which was raised during my time in Kenya and which remains a source of conversation and conflict: the role of photography in representations of the Other, and in particular, what Susan Sontag has termed the “iconography of suffering.”

In addition to being armed with lofty ideas and images of Africa inspired by National Geographic covers, my fellow students and I were endowed with a particular gift of modernity: the digital camera. Together we debated the implications of appropriate picture-taking. In capturing images of Africa, we were adamant in our commitment to “cultural sensitivity” and fervent in our desire to avoid any measure of ethnocentrism or exploitative tourism. Snapping mantelpiece shots of kissing giraffes was acceptable, but we were collectively mortified when one of our peers dared to ask if she could take pictures of babies at an orphanage for children with HIV. People’s lives, we agreed, were not material for our photo albums.

However, quickly these grandiose commitments fell to the wayside in our growing desire to snap photographs of everything and everyone we saw. We became inexplicably compelled to capture images that mirrored the Kenya we had constructed in our minds. Far worse than our desire to capture the African landscape of our imagination was the desire to capture the Africans of our imagination. Spurred by the quest for authenticity, we sought to create what we believed to be a true representation of Africa – images of human suffering.

In Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag writes that, “Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience, the cumulative offering by more than a century and a half’s worth of those professional, specialized tourists known as journalists.” Photojournalism is a field fraught with irreconcilable tensions between aesthetic pursuits, truthful documentation, and the obligation of human conscience. War photographers frequently come under harsh criticism for their choices to enter conflict or disaster zones for the purposes of documentation and with refusal to interfere. Indeed, it has become nearly platitudinous to argue that photojournalism is inherently exploitative in privileging art and the pursuit of the image over human experience.

The overwhelming majority of such photographs of trauma come from areas that we might identify as the “developing world,” a phenomenon Sontag identifies as exhibiting “exotic” – meaning colonized – subjects. The photographic representation of atrocity creates an imagined proximity between the spectator and those who are suffering. As spectators, we have become conditioned to rely on these images’ evocation of shock, shame and sympathy. Through the “iconography of suffering,” a type of voyeurism is engendered. Whether we are faraway spectators, or behind the camera ourselves, the act of representation further exoticizes the human experience and in doing so, reinforces the space between us and the Other.

Emblematic of these questions is the story of Kevin Carter, a South African photographer whose 1993 image of a starving Sudanese toddler being stalked by a vulture won acclaim and the Pulitzer Prize. Carter’s photo was met with overwhelming reader responses and queries regarding the fate of the young girl. Had she made it to safety? Had Carter helped her? Or had she been left to her fate, immortalized on film?

A few months after being awarded the prize, Carter took his own life, citing “vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain…of starving or wounded children.” His death left a mark on the field of photojournalism and brought a new set of questions and challenges to the meaning of the image in our modern context, and especially, what it means to capture the image of human suffering. The discourse surrounding the “iconography of suffering” are all too often obscured by the harsh criticisms wagered against the individuals who choose to engage with this medium. We must not shy away from confronting our attraction to the image, and the meanings and implications of the images themselves.

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The PGC has undertaken important projects such as providing recycling bins for plastic and paper in every lab, replacing Styrofoam cups with ceramic mugs for weekly guest speaker presentations, and putting up posters elucidating which lab products can be recycled.

“The most common theme [regarding pharmacological research] is that people tend not to know what’s better [environmentally],” explained Sebastian Boridy, PhD IV student in pharmacology and therepeutics, and co-chair of PGC. “As a committee we’re trying to emphasize the impact our day-to-day activities in the lab are having and give options. Because for humans, if they know there’s a better option, they’ll use it.”

In order to provide more avenues for busy students and staff to engage in eco-friendly behaviour, the PGC has set further goals for 2011.

One goal is to promote the purchase of environmentally-friendly products. For those who aren’t necessarily willing to pay more, the committee is trying to raise enough money to be able to cover the difference in cost, compared to products that are cheaper and less eco-friendly. These products span from things as simple as hand-soap to chemical solvents.

The committee has also looked into replacing certain reagents in the protocol – substituting certain chemicals with others that are greener and produce the same end result as far as the experiment goes. In fact, several people in the committee have been carrying out these tests and generating results. For instance, ethanol can be used instead of methanol for the Western Blot technique, which is used frequently in labs to detect specific proteins in a given tissue.

“We’re all scientists,” said Tina Scardochio, co-chair of PGC and PhD III in Pharmacology and Therapeutics, “So we’re trying to approach it in a way in which others will understand and believe. We’re coming at it from a very science perspective. We have proof, we’ve ran the experiments, you can replace this with this, for example.”

A long-term goal is to consolidate orders from a given company amongst laboratories in the department. Products shipped to labs usually come in plastic #6 boxes, which are non-recyclable in Quebec, and are then further packaged in more boxes, including one made of foam. The committee hopes that by improving communication between different labs, and possibly setting up an online site that people can easily access, orders can be consolidated. As a result, there will be less shipping, less packaging, and less waste.

The committee also hopes to remove the negative associations with these changes and make them easier.

“Basically, we want to be effective,” said Scardochio. “We have a specialized, unique focus because here, in the science department – and labs essentially – you have different concerns than the general public, and I don’t think those needs are necessarily catered to by any green committee that I know of at McGill. So we’re trying to create a trend so that other departments will set up similar committees and then join forces to have bigger impact.”

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The idea was first conceived by Brendan Shanahan, U3 History student and chairperson of the conference’s subcommittee, in collaboration with the SSMU Equity Committee. In an interview with The Daily, Shanahan mentioned that previous to “Equity and Media,” he had never been involved with issues of equity before this year. However, with his academic interest in history he decided to plan a conference where undergraduates could share their ideas and research instead of simply writing about them for class.

Shanahan described equity as “the breaking down of conceptions of the Other.” To facilitate the dialogue, the second day of the conference is loosely divided into a few sub-themes: social media and social movements, equity, media and concepts of the body, and the media and civil rights.

SSMU Equity Commissioner and U4 Political Science student Emily Clare told The Daily “The point of the conference is to mainstream equity into academia and to see that everyone can participate in the dialogue of equity.” According to the conference’s press release, student paper topics can vary greatly and can examine the use of media and race, ethnicity, religion, gender, class, sexuality, disabilities, First Nations relations, and the environment. However both Shanahan and Clare agree that there is no ideal paper. The conference aims to be as open as possible, enabling submissions to craft the conference rather than letting the conference dictate the nature of the submissions.

The conference is partly a reaction to false and destructive information provided by media outlets. “When I look at the American media I see a system where there is no productive debate, there is no productive forum. One side has established talking points and they talk amongst people who are already of their persuasion,” Shanahan explained.

“Equity and Media” will reach out to students who may not have previously considered themselves active in the dialogue surrounding equity. Clare added that, “we can change the formula of a general conference…because sometimes conferences can be alienating for people who don’t know too much about the subject or [who] may not have the academic vernacular to participate.” Shanahan explained, “It’s really an event for everyone. …It is in the spirit of McGill to promote tolerance, anti-oppression ,and the idea of equality.”

Shanahan and Clare both hope that the conference will continue into the future. Clare explained that, “the mantra that we are going with throughout the whole entire committee is that we want what we are doing now to continue.”

“Equity and Media” is being held March 25 and 26 at the Thomson House, and submissions are due Feburary 1. Go to ssmu.mcgill.ca/about/ssmu-equity for more information.

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