The Daily spoke to Marwah over the course of ten days while he was in Syria and Turkey.

The 18-year-old is president of the Syrian Student Association in Ottawa (SSAO). His father, Hisham Marwah, originally from Damascus, is the head of the legal division of the Syrian National Council (SNC).

The SNC has recently come under domestic and international attack for not being representative of activists on the ground. Hisham Marwah was not available for comment at press time.

“I started being involved in activism for Syria at the beginning of the revolution. I was never involved in activism before,” Yaman Marwah told The Daily in a Skype interview. A close friend of his father arranged for him to enter Syria.

“It was an opportunity for me to fight back, to go back to my country. My dad and him have been friends since 35 years; he trusted his friend so it was easy for him to accept [the] idea I was going to Syria,” Marwah explained.

Marwah went to Syria with his friend Faris Al Shawaf. Al Shawaf is also a Syrian-Canadian student and is on the Board of Directors for the Syrian Canadian Council (SCC).

“We were going on a media mission, we were trying to send the pictures of what is happening in Syria to the people in Canada,” Marwah said. The students were also on a humanitarian mission to deliver donations – including $5,000 and toys – that they had collected in Canada.

“I wanted to make sure they were going to the right people by delivering them in person,” Marwah said of the donations.

Arriving in Syria

Marwah and Al Shawaf entered Syria through the Turkish border, which is presently under FSA control.

“We walked to the Turkish borders, got the stamp outside, and walked for around two kilometres until we reached the Syrian border, and we just walked in,” Marwah told The Daily. “A friend of mine was waiting for us there, picked us up, and kept going.”

Marwah arrived late in the night on October 25 in Binnish. “On Friday morning, there was the Islamic celebration of Eid al-Adha. There was a big rally in Binnish that we were part of, then we visited some of the FSA, had some interviews with them, and then they did accompany us to Taftanaz, one of the most damaged cities in Syria right now.”

Marwah explained that 90 per cent of buildings in Taftanaz have been destroyed by the Syrian army’s air raids. “There were always [Syrian army] planes flying above us, heading to Taftanaz,” he said. “We can hear the bombing, we can hear the planes, we can hear everything. It is very freaky, they might hit us any single moment.”

Binnish is part of the Idlib Governorate in northwestern Syria. The city of Idlib is currently a site of open struggle between the FSA and the Syrian army. The rest of the province, including Binnish, is mostly under FSA control, according to Marwah.

“Although the FSA has taken control of Binnish, Taftanaz and other cities, the Syrian army is doing their bombing from war planes and helicopters. The army is using air strikes so that all they have to lose is ammunition. The FSA does not yet have the antiaircraft missiles to stop the regime’s forces from advancing,” he told The Daily in Arabic.

Most of the FSA’s machine guns are captured from the Syrian army or bought inside Syria.

According to Marwah, “The FSA has not been able to smuggle any heavy arms. They can only smuggle light arms.”

“Syrian army soldiers who are desperate for money are selling their machine guns for 85,000 Syrian pounds,” he said.

According to current conversion rates, this would amount to roughly $1,200.

He also explained that the black market price of the machine gun has doubled over the last few months.

Marwah and Al Shawaf publicly posted photos of themselves carrying guns inside Syria on Facebook.  Marwah said that once in Syria, the FSA trained him to use a gun for self-defense.

The FSA accompanied Marwah and Al Shawaf everywhere they went in Syria.

Marwah believes FSA units work in coordination across Syria. “I witnessed coordination between the FSA in Binnish and the FSA in Taftanaz, when they communicated with each other to make sure there were no government war planes in Taftanaz before taking me there. The coordination is how we managed to travel between two different cities,” he explained.

Qatmeh Refugee Camp

On October 27, Marwah and Al Shawaf were accompanied by the FSA to Qatmeh, a refugee camp inside Syria. They distributed food in the camp, as well as toys for the children there.

Marwah said that he thinks donations and humanitarian aid should be directed more toward camps inside Syria. He explained that governmental and non-governmental aid agencies and the media usually focus on the refugee camps outside Syria, which have mainly formed in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon.

“When we went to Qatmeh, they said the last time they got bread was ten days ago. The situation is really bad in refugee camps inside Syria,” said Marwah. He and Al Shawaf used the $5,000 collected in Canada to buy the food they distributed.

Marwah wrote on Facebook that he was raising money to start a bakery in the camp to help the refugees produce their own bread.

Massacre in Binnish

On November 3, the Syrian army hit Binnish. “The planes hit just two hundred metres from where I was,” Marwah said. “When I heard the plane, I ran to the door to see what was happening. When I ran to the door, along with my friend who came from Canada, we were thrown away from the door by the force of the bomb. I got my leg injured.”

Several people lost their lives in the November 3 attack, according to Marwah. “There were at least twenty rockets that hit Binnish,” he recalled. “I witnessed a massacre.”

Reuters reported that government fighter jets had bombed Binnish that day following an FSA attack on a military airbase near Aleppo. A video uploaded to YouTube by activists showed residents fleeing the main square, as well as dead or injured civilians.

Marwah photographed an old woman whose face had been burned during the attack. He also witnessed a six-year-old girl being dug up from under the ruins of a building that had been hit by a rocket.

“Every time I hear a bomb, the only thing I think is, ‘this bomb might have hit me and that it could be me under those damaged rocks and buildings,’” he said.

Marwah’s older brother, Anas Marwah lives in Ottawa, is involved with the SSAO, and is on the media committee of the SNC. He told The Daily that “the day the bombarding happened on Binnish, we had no way to reach [Yaman] and it was very stressful here for me and my mother.”

“All we hear in the news is that Binnish is being bombarded but we have no clue where Yaman is, and what is he doing,” he continued.

After the massacre, the FSA escorted Marwah and Al Shawaf back to Turkey.

Since the Hafez al-Assad military coup in 1970, the government has prohibited soldiers from serving in their own cities, according to Marwah.

“The soldiers from Damascus are serving in Aleppo, and people from Daraa are sent to Idlib. The government posts people in cities different from their own so that the soldiers don’t feel as if they are killing their own people,” Marwah said in Arabic. “If you tell a guy from Daraa, ‘fire at Hama,’ he will fire.”

“The government posts people in cities different from their own so that the soldiers don’t feel as if they are killing their own people. If you tell a guy from Daraa, ‘fire at Hama,’ he will fire.”

“Government soldiers desert whenever they have the chance. It is very difficult for them to do so, because if they run away they will be killed. The only time they can desert is when they get permission to go visit their families,” Marwah explained.

“This is a revolution of the countryside and the peripheries, and I can guarantee you the rebels I met were all from Syria. They are all fighting for one goal, which is freeing Syria,” Marwah added in Arabic. “I see the revolution lasting at least another year.”

On the politics of naming the uprising, Anas Marwah said, “people are calling it a revolution, people are calling it a civil war, people are calling it a genocide. In this case, there is an oppressive regime killing its own people to stay in power, and they do not care how many civilians die.”

Anas rejects a sectarian interpretation of the war. According to him, the militias supporting the regime are composed of foreigners and Syrians who are being paid important sums by the government.

Marwah’s Return

Marwah spoke to The Daily again on November 4 from his aunt’s house in Antakya, Turkey.  She left Syria at the beginning of the revolution because her house was bombed. Her husband was captured by the Syrian army and remains imprisoned.

His aunt initially stayed in a refugee camp in Turkey, but was able to buy a house in Antakya after receiving monetary aid from family abroad and in Turkey.

Marwah has friends and family still living in Latakia and in Damascus, with whom he communicates regularly.

He said he is not worried about retaliations from the Syrian government following media exposure. “The Syrian government knows I’m an activist, they know my dad, and members of my family in Syria are all protesting against the regime, they are all standing against the regime and calling for their freedom.”

At press time, Yaman Marwah had arrived back in Ottawa without incident.

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Golden Dawn Montreal has had a Facebook page since July. Facho-watch, a Quebec anti-fascism group, told The Daily that Golden Dawn members organized a conference in August with Quebec neofascist groups Faction Nationaliste and La Bannière Noire.  Golden Dawn Montreal held a fundraising event on September 15. The event was advertised in the Greek Canadian Tribune (BHMA). Facho-watch participated in a protest against Golden Dawn on the same day.

Golden Dawn stated on September 18 on its official website that they are “already expecting the first shipment of aid from the core of Montreal in the coming days, which gives us hope that Greek nationalists never forget Greece.”

“They are only going to give those benefits, or those charitable boxes, to people who are legally resident in Greece,” Steven Slimovitch, spokesperson for B’nai Brith Canada, a Jewish advocacy group which fights antisemitism, told The Daily.

“We are utterly disgusted,” Slimovitch said about the creation of a Golden Dawn chapter in Montreal. “You have a party which is xenophobic to the nth degree, which has built itself on a racist platform and there is no place for a group like that in Canada. They believe that our lax laws against hate speech allow them to open up an office and spew the kind of hate that they’ve been spewing in Greece.”

On May 14, Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos told Mega TV in Greece that the Holocaust was a “fabricated exaggeration.”

Spiros Macrozonaris, deputy leader of the Golden Dawn Montreal chapter, told the National Post that Golden Dawn has recruited 152 members in the city.

“This is totally false,” Facho-watch told The Daily in an email. “When they organized the food collect, they were only a dozen of members. On the group pictures we found, there aren’t more than 12 individuals.”

“We will continue to monitor them very closely with [the Canadian Security Intelligence Service] and the federal government and the Sûreté du Québec to […] make sure that a group like this does not establish a foothold in Canada,” said Slimovitch.

“The real lead in all of those should be taken by the Greek community,” he continued.

An online petition created by ‘Kat M,’ a Greek Canadian living in Greece according to the National Post, asked Stephen Harper to shut down Golden Dawn in Montreal. The petition had collected 2,450 signatures at press time.

The Hellenic Community of Greater Montreal and the McGill Hellenic Students’ Association could not be reached for comment.

Alexander Kazamias, senior lecturer in Politics at Coventry University, told The Daily that “all Greek parties set up local branches outside Greece, especially in cities with large Greek diaspora communities,” despite the fact that Greek citizens cannot vote from abroad.

McGill Economics professor Ken Matziorinis told The Daily that “since [Golden Dawn is] a legitimate party in Greece, they have the right to voice their opinions, even if their views are dangerous.”

“They have a right to open a chapter anywhere else in the world, unless they involve themselves in terrorist acts.”

Both Kazamias and Matziorinis say that it is important to understand the political and economic context in which this breed of nationalism has developed.

“Golden Dawn is a neofascist party. To some extent it represents a continuation of the military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974,” Kazamias said.

Michaloliakos “was handpicked in 1984 by the leader of that dictatorship […] to lead the youth organization of a […] quasi-fascist party which enjoyed some support in the 1970s and 1980s,” Kazamias continued.

“The austerity drive that the northern countries – especially Germany – are advocating is certainly making the situation worse,” Matziorinis said.

“[Greece’s Gross Domestic Product] has been contracting for more than five years,”  Matziorinis said. “The Greek public is being asked to make sacrifices through tax increases and income salary cuts while unemployment is at 25 per cent.”

This has created “a perception that the social contract has been broken” in Europe, according to Matziorinis.

The situation in Greece is an “exact repeat of what happened with the collapse of the middle class in Germany [in the 1930s], which gave rise to extremist parties,” he continued. “The economic circumstances that Greece is facing are similar to those of a country that has lost a war, that has debts, and that at the same time is forced to make reparations.”

Kazamias, on the other hand, pointed to contrasts between Greece and 1930s Germany. “Fascism might be a rising force across much of Europe today, but it is still far from becoming a dominant ideology,” he said.

“For a fascist party to rise to power, it is necessary for the forces of the left to experience successive defeats. In Greece, however, so far the Greek left has seen its position enhanced and its popularity is rising sharply.”

Golden Dawn has been accused of leading attacks against immigrants in Greece. “Golden Dawn is a racist party that hates all non-white immigrants, however, there is a clear class dimension to the racism of Golden Dawn,” said Kazamias. “Their thugs prefer to attack […] poor manual workers.”

Facho-watch described collusion between Greek police and Golden Dawn members, in which some police units are allowing Golden Dawn to act as law enforcers.

Kazamias believes that “the connections of the Greek police and certain army units with neofascist elements which go back years,” and have contributed to the success of Golden Dawn.

“We do have a solution [for these immigrants] though. Greece, everybody knows, we have a very strong shipping industry. We’re going to bring them all to Canada. Canada needs immigrants here,” Macrozonaris told the Montreal Gazette.

“When there is too much illegal occupation all of a sudden, in a climate of economic uncertainty and depression, that accentuates these [anti-immigrant] feelings,” he said.

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“Mr. Ducharme fought both at the Battle of Beaver Dams in Upper Canada and at the Battle of the Chateauguay, and played an important role in Canada’s development,” Minister of Public Works and Government Services Rona Ambrose stated in a press release.

“The building’s proximity to the Battle of the Chateauguay site gives it special historic significance for the region,” Jacques Gourde, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services, said at the October 10 naming ceremony.

According to the government press release, the Battle of Chateauguay was a decisive loss for the Americans, who abandoned their Saint Lawrence campaign.

Pierre Nantel, vice-critic for Canadian Heritage for the New Democratic Party, told La Presse in French that he is “concerned to see new symbols being imposed as new icons of Canada, implying that the symbols which have been built over the years have not been sufficient.”

In an interview with The Daily, Canadian military history expert and Hiram Mills Emeritus Professor Desmond Morton explained that the federal government is not giving the full story on Ducharme.

“[Ducharme] was the British Army’s Indian Department agent with the Mohawks who defeated the Americans at Beaver Dams, using the information Laura Secord had brought to Lieutenant Fitzgibbon. As usual in our history, reference to the Mohawks is never part of the Laura Secord story,” said Morton.

“The real victors in the War of 1812 weren’t the Upper Canadians [Ontario]; it was the Lower Canadians [Quebec] who provided much of the troops in the early victories,” Morton continued. “The best militia in North America was the militia that had evolved in Lower Canada.”

“Nobody in Ontario ever hears about this. I’m not sure Mr. Harper wants them to, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to recognize that the French Canadians saved them so they could go on being Canadians,” he added.

History Students’ Association (HSA) President Hannah Wood told The Daily, “Canadian history as taught in elementary and secondary schools is highly selective. The War of 1812 was never discussed.”

However, according to Wood, the war was symbolically formative to the Canadian nation. “A fundamental part of popular Canadian identity is the fact we are not American. Although the War of 1812 may technically have been a British war, Canada has historically identified with Britain over America,” she said.

Wood said she hopes “there is a concerted effort to represent events such as the War of 1812 accurately, and not idealize them as the government has done in its press releases and television commercials.”

She specified that these views are her own and do not necessarily represent those of HSA constituents.

In an interview with The Daily, Alan Taylor – Pulitzer Prize winner, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, and author of The Civil War of 1812 – said, “in Upper Canada at the start of the war, most of the inhabitants were settlers from the United States. During the first two years of the war most of them sought to avoid any service in the war, on either side, and some of them did join the invaders.”

“By the last year of the war, most of the Upper Canada inhabitants did reluctantly become more active in defending the colony and the war did create a greater sense of Canadian patriotism,” said Taylor.

However, Taylor noted, “Canadian militia played an important role but of lesser importance when compared to the leading roles played by the British regulars and the First Nation peoples.”

“My dissent from the government position is that it implies that all Canadians immediately rallied to defend the colony [and] that there was already a unified Canada when in fact there were seven distinct colonies,” he said.

Taylor also criticized the Canadian government for glorifying the war. “The government line also misses a golden opportunity to treat the war as a tragedy that persuaded both Americans and the British that they should avoid future wars,” he said. “The 200 years of peace warrant our celebration far more than does the supposed glories of a war full of miseries.  At the 1912 centennial commemoration there was much more bi-national cooperation around the message of shared peace.”

“While spending $29 million on TV ads and reenactments, the federal government has gutted the budgets of Parks Canada and the Library and Archives Canada, which strikes me as a misallocation of priorities and resources,” Taylor added.

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In August, McGill billed students the first $254 installment of the tuition hike planned by the Liberal government. Tuition was set to increase by $254 every year for seven years.

McGill students were required to pay their tuitions bills by August 31. Students receiving financial aid could request to defer payment.

According to Le Devoir, other Quebec universities also billed students the tuition fee increase this summer.

In response to the September 4 election of the Parti Québécois (PQ), which promised to cancel the tuition hike, McGill published a “Statement on changes in Quebec tuition policy.” In the statement, the University said it was waiting on “official directives” from the government before updating student bills or beginning a refund process.

McGill did not email students about the statement, which was published on the Student Accounts page of the University’s website.

The PQ government officially cancelled the tuition hike by ministerial decree on September 20.

McGill Director of Internal Communications Doug Sweet told The Daily, “we have yet to receive official confirmation, but we expect that student accounts will be credited with the difference between what they paid in tuition and the new fee structure soon after we do.”

Sweet could not confirm that refunds would be offered. “Refunds may be issued, but I don’t have details of the process,” he said.

Matthew, a U3 History student who wished to be identified by first name only, told The Daily, “The government, the day they were elected, said the hike was over. It has been almost a month and the school is still waiting for so-called official word.”

“Is this supposed be a secret thing? Are we going to find out one day that the money reappeared in our account?” he said.

McGill’s slow response has affected the start of the semester for students like Matthew. “It would be important to actually have the cash back, as someone who pays my own tuition, so I can finish buying my textbooks,” he said.

SSMU VP External Robin Reid-Fraser told The Daily that the student union “will be asking the University about [the tuition refund] next week if it still looks like they aren’t doing anything about it.”

U4 Middle East studies student Robert Bell said he is not satisfied with SSMU’s response to date. “They are not responding adequately to the issue, but when have they ever? It is a shameful abdication of their responsibility to ensure the economic welfare of their constituency,” he said.

McGill’s operational budget will be unaffected by the change in tuition in 2012-2013 because the PQ government has promised to maintain expected levels of funding by making up the difference caused by the cancellation of the tuition fee increase, according to Sweet.

“The longer view remains cloudy and we’ll have to wait for the summit on higher education to get a clearer picture of where we’ll stand,” said Sweet.

The PQ government is planning a summit on higher education this fall. Strategies for funding higher education, such as the indexation of tuition fees to inflation, will be discussed.

Newly-appointed Higher Education Minister Pierre Duchesne is expected to invite major student federations Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec, Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec, and Coalition large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante to the summit, as well as Table de concertation étudiante du Québec, SSMU’s official negotiating representative.

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The demonstration came after students began a tradition of protests on the 22nd day of every month. Organizers estimated that around 5,000 people were at the demonstration.

Protesters started gathering at Parc Lafontaine around 2 p.m. Police maintained a presence from the beginning of the demonstration.

The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) declared the demonstration illegal from its onset, based on municipal bylaw P-6 on “Prevention of disturbances to the peace, public security, and public order.” The bylaw requires organizers to give police an itinerary of the demonstration in advance.

The SPVM told The Daily that three arrests were made at the demonstration. The SPVM also tweeted that some protesters were throwing projectiles and that one police officer was injured.

The crowd began marching east on Cherrier at 2:50 p.m. after which it went south on Berri and east again on Ontario. Following a number of re-routes the march reached Sherbrooke and Peel, where it clashed with the SPVM.

The demonstration ended around 5 p.m. on Drummond between Maisonneuve and Ste. Catherine after the SPVM dispersed the march into several groups.

Coalition large de l’Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (CLASSE) co-spokesperson Camille Robert told The Daily that “today, we are demonstrating to celebrate our victory. Although tuition fees were cancelled for 2012-2013, there remains a lot to be done for accessibility to higher education in Quebec. This is why we are supporting free education today.”

“Many student associations have classes on Saturdays, including UQAM and CEGEP du Vieux-Montréal. Their associations have for the most part voted on strike mandates for today’s demonstrations,” she added.

Option Nationale leader Jean-Martin Aussant, who was at the demonstration, told The Daily that free education was in his party’s platform.

“The demonstration can inform many groups of people that free education is not a cost. Many people think free education will cost the state money, when it will actually generate revenue,” said Aussant.

“Every country that has implemented free higher education has realized that it was generating revenue because people who go to school longer on average earn more money and pay more taxes,” he added.

SSMU VP External Robin Reid-Fraser, who was one of the approximately 15 McGill students who attended the demonstration, told The Daily she was at the protest to “show support for the cause of free education.”

“I think it is important to show that even though the current hike has been cancelled, and the [student] federations are saying they won and the movement is basically done, there are still people who believe on further progress on this issue,” said Reid-Fraser.

Regarding SSMU’s position on the issue, Reid-Fraser stated that  “currently we have a resolution in favour of accessible education, and free education is definitely something that fits into that.”

“We will be revisiting this at our general assemblies this year and we might go farther with it somewhere soon,” she added.

One McGill student, who wished to remain anonymous, was watching the demonstration from Sherbrooke. “My personal opinion is that Quebec tuition is the cheapest in Canada anyway,” the Quebec resident said.

“Education is a privilege not a right, and I find it hard to believe that that small a raise in tuition is that big a deal for people. What we’re paying is hardly anything. If you need money from the government to go to school you can apply for it. I did and I got it,” they said.

Marjolaine Gaudreau, a woman in her forties, attended the demonstration in solidarity with her 14-year-old daughter, whom she hopes will eventually benefit from free higher education.  “I am an angry mother in solidarity,” she said in French. “The police pushed me in the back with their shields, they hit you, they insult you, and they don’t care when you tell them you are peaceful and of a certain age!”

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Unemployed Professors currently employs 30 professors, according to the Montreal Gazette.

The website operates through a bidding process in which professors compete for requests submitted by students.

The Daily submitted a prompt to the website to evaluate these bids, and within minutes of submitting a prompt for a generic history assignment using 15 primary sources, two professors had bid on the project.

Using the pseudonym “Professor-Rogue,” the first bidder demanded $250 for the ten-page paper, promising a two-day delivery.

Professor-Rogue’s profile stated that they hold an “Ivy League BA, Ivy League MA (Sociology), Ivy League MA (Political Science) and a Big State School PhD (Political Science).” On the Unemployed Professors blog, Professor-Rogue claimed to hold “a relatively good position at a top-flight University.”

The Daily could not verify these claims.

Professor-Rogue also described themselves as an “academic prostitute.”

“When I write a custom essay, I’m selling my cognitive function, my ability to regurgitate complex information in a coherent way,” Professor-Rogue wrote on their blog.

Professor-Rogue received a rating of five stars on the website, based on 71 student reviews. One anonymous student commented, “Excellent work, as usual! Exhaustively researched and persuasive.”Another claimed that “[the work] was so well done, I thought my teacher wouldn’t even think it was me who wrote it!”

The second bid for The Daily’s prompt was from “History-Mistress,” who asked for seven days to complete the project at a rate of $25 per page.

Although the company claims all of its writers are “current and former academics and graduate students who teach their own classes, with advanced graduate degrees,” History-Mistress only claimed to have a Bachelor of Arts from “a top tier school” on their profile page.

The Daily did not accept either bid.

In defence of its service, Unemployed Professors states on its website, “the academic system is already so corrupt, we’re totally cool with [being really unethical].”

Professor-Rogue echoed this sentiment in a blog post entitled “Don’t Hate Da Playa; Hate Da Game,” in which he stated that “the PhD market is oversaturated” and that administrators and football coaches are “pocketing mad cash.”

“Education has become a commodity,” wrote Professor-Rogue.

Linda Jacobs Starkey, interim Dean of Students at McGill and Chair of the Enrolment and Student Affairs Advisory Committee (ESAAC) Subcommittee on Academic Integrity, told The Daily, “As an academic, Chair of the Subcommittee on Academic Integrity, the existence of such sites is clearly disappointing. That our students could be drawn to them is a big concern. It’s too bad these sites are there and that students use them.”

“Students that use the service are not trying to scam the system,” she continued. “Students could fall down on a paper and make bad choice and we have to wonder what went wrong. These students lack confidence as learners to express [their] analysis and interpretation.”

Beginning this semester, graduate students must complete a mandatory online academic integrity tutorial. Next year it will be mandatory for undergraduates as well.

“Notions of research ethics and academic integrity have impact. If we prepare our students about academic integrity, and if they have confidence to show their thinking, we can prevent plagiarism,” said Starkey.

U3 History and Political Science student Samuel Felix Harris, whose friend has used a similar service, believes that Unemployed Professors “shows a bad flaw in the academic system…a blatant example of when the system is broken” and that students use the website out of desperation, “[seeing] no other way of completing these papers they have to submit.”

“Because of the academic integrity warning published on every syllabus at McGill, everyone knows what plagiarism is,” he said. “Arts papers are easier to plagiarize because you can get away with writing a paper without attending a class.”

He added that while plagiarism detection software such as Turnitin is a “decent idea”, “requiring research proposals would be helpful in preventing plagiarism because they force you to engage in the topic you are purportedly going to write about.”

According to the Committee on Student Discipline Annual Report published by the McGill Senate, 164 allegations of plagiarism were made at the University in 2010-2011, 31 of which were against graduate students. 55 students were ultimately exonerated.

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