When I received an email recently outlining plans to ban smoking across the downtown campus, I was deeply concerned. I don’t smoke, myself, so I could have waved this off as something that didn’t affect me. But the truth is, as a TA who cares about my students, as a queer person, as one of the people in whose name this policy is being proposed, I am affected.

My father is a musician whose primary workplace is in bars and restaurants. When a ban on indoor smoking went into place in my hometown of Chicago, his working conditions improved significantly. Second-hand smoke is a dangerous and unpleasant thing in a contained environment and even outdoors, concentrated second-hand smoke is a serious concern for people with asthma, chemical sensitivities, and allergies. But there are many ways these risks can and should be mitigated which do not involve the banning of smoking altogether.

The reality is that a campus-wide ban on smoking is effectively a ban on smokers themselves. Obligating students and staff to leave campus in order to smoke reduces their ability to participate in on-campus activities. Say we accept the claim, from the smoking policy website FAQ, that nowhere on campus is more than a three minute walk from public property (and if you can get from the top floor of Leacock to a public street in fewer than three minutes with construction, you should get some kind of prize). Those three minutes to and from a smoking spot still take up six minutes of an average ten minute break. While classmates and work colleagues who need a caffeine hit can easily pop downstairs for one in almost any campus building, McGillians who depend on nicotine will be forced to choose between missing class material or work time and having difficulty focusing.

This double-bind is particularly troubling when you consider that low-income students, queer students, and students with mental illnesses, among other minority groups, are all more likely than average to smoke. These students are also those who are already more likely to face difficulties at McGill, and drop out due to alienation and lack of support. Pushing smoking off campus makes it even more difficult for such students to fully engage in their education, while sending them a clear message: “you are dirty, noxious, and don’t fit into our vision of this university.”

The reality is that a campus-wide ban on smoking is effectively a ban on smokers themselves.

The website for McGill’s smoking policy pays lip service to the need for smoking cessation resources, but offers no new or additional resources beyond existing counseling services and nicotine gums and patches. Further, there is no indication of plans to increase the level of funding towards these existing resources, which limits the number of students it can appeal to. Incidentally, there is evidence to suggest that minority populations are better served by culturally-tailored smoking cessation programs, rather than a one-size-fits-all model. I have seen friends go through successful and unsuccessful attempts to quit smoking, so I know that it is no easy process and is nearly impossible when also under a great amount of stress, such as many people experience at a highly-competitive university. Meanwhile, McGill’s mental health and counselling services are overwhelmed and difficult to access, making it hardly surprising that many students self-medicate their anxiety and exhaustion with nicotine.

As someone whose former undergraduate institution implemented a similar ban, I’ve seen this process play out before. At Ball State University, as at McGill, a well-connected group of non-smoking students with public health concerns (and, if I’m being cynical, a desire to polish their resumes) promoted the smoking ban. Most people tacitly went along—after all, we all know that smoking is harmful, and no one wants to be tagged as promoting smoking. Soon the university administration followed suit: a ban fit their desire to look green, healthy, and cutting-edge, and it would cut down on the cost of cleaning public spaces while giving them revenue from fines. The students who could least afford the ban were often juggling work and school and lacked the credibility and sleek organizing of the ban promoters, so their voices were barely heard until it was too late. In the end, the ban lasted two years before smoking was allowed on campus again as a result of neighbours’ complaints.

As a student of urban planning, I’m appalled that McGill’s proposed solution is simply to push the ‘problem’ onto public property. The streets around McGill’s campus are heavily-used thoroughfares, both for McGill students and staff heading onto campus and for other members of the public. Concentrating smoking in these areas simply pushes any possible effects of second-hand smoke into a more densely-used (and already exhaust-polluted) area, letting McGill keep its pristine lawns and air of moral superiority while pawning off the issues of cigarette butts and second-hand smoke onto the City of Montreal.

I profoundly hope that the committee will reconsider, and that my fellow McGillians will join me in opposing any such ban that doesn’t provide for the treatment of smokers as full and supported members of our community.

The post An open letter to the University appeared first on The McGill Daily.

More than a year after our last collective agreement expired in June 2014, TAs at McGill are reaching the end of the bargaining process over a new contract. McGill’s administration made its final offer at the bargaining table on September 1, and TAs will be voting at the General Assembly for their union, AGSEM, on September 30 to determine whether to accept this offer or fight back by striking.

AGSEM’s primary goal in bargaining has been to keep TA hours consistent with undergraduate enrolment in order to maintain the quality of education at McGill. Essentially, we want to ensure that there are enough paid hours during which we can do the work that needs to be done. Over the past decade, the number of TA hours per undergraduate student at McGill has plunged significantly, from 12.86 in 2006 to 11.25 now, with the fraction of the operating budget dedicated to TA wages dwindling every year. Skimping on funding for teaching support means that there are fewer and lower paid TA jobs for graduate students, many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet in programs with no guaranteed funding. It means that some of the work TAs would have done is picked up by professors at the expense of their other commitments, by overworked course lecturers with limited union protection and no job security, and by underpaid course graders. Mostly, however, it means that undergraduate students end up with more and more multiple choice tests, fewer office hours and opportunities for one-on-one or small group learning, and a less fulfilling education overall.

McGill’s teaching assistants deserve – and desperately need – better working conditions.

AGSEM’s bargaining demands include indexing TA hours to increasing undergraduate enrolment and guaranteeing sufficient TA funds in McGill’s budgets for faculties and departments (as deemed necessary by professors in those departments). AGSEM also wants to establish stricter limits on TA positions  of fewer than 45 hours per semester, as these often lead to more work being offloaded onto grader positions that provide less educational support and pay much less per hour.

These demands – intended to preserve both the quality of educational support at McGill and the ability of our fellow TAs to pay their tuition and rent – have been met with absolute refusal by the McGill’s  senior administration, who declared the University  was only willing to bargain regarding the hourly wage. Even on this front, the University’s offer is inadequate. The administration’s final offer to TAs would only increase wages by $200 to $250 per year (assuming a student manages to get 180-hour positions in both the fall and winter semesters). With stagnant wages, increasing costs of living, and a shrinking pool of TA hours, this proposal isn’t enough to meet the needs of TAs. Additionally, under this offer, out-of-province and international students, who make up roughly 45 per cent of McGill’s graduate student body and are particularly reliant on on-campus jobs, cannot even cover their tuition increases. TA conditions are set to get worse, not better, under this proposal.  

Although McGill’s administration claims to be short on funds, its words at the bargaining table make it clear that cost is not the barrier preventing it from meeting our demands. When discussing AGSEM’s demand that McGill partially reimburse TAs’ health insurance and tuition, as is standard at other universities, McGill’s negotiators stated that the University’s objection was a matter of principle, not of cost. Much the same can be said of McGill’s refusal to guarantee an adequate number of TA hours or an adequate budget line from which to pay us. The issue is not cost, which would be well within its means (the TA budget is currently about 1.1 per cent of McGill’s operating budget), but rather the administration’s refusal to set any sort of precedent that might commit them to prioritizing fair and equitable conditions for students and workers.

One last option: a strike

On September 30, AGSEM members will vote on whether or not to accept McGill’s offer. As present and former members and elected officials of AGSEM, we know that McGill’s teaching assistants deserve – and desperately need – better working conditions. We also know that McGill’s administration concedes nothing without pressure. Although this is the final offer at the bargaining table, TAs still have a chance to fight for our university – by rejecting this offer and voting to strike.

Consider some of the gains that workers have won from going on strike.

First, every major gain McGill TAs have won has been due to a strike. And every time we have gone on strike, we have won something important: in 1976, a base salary and protections against overtime that set a precedent nationally; in 1998, a reduction in salary disparities across the university (TA salaries were completely equalized in 2006); and in 2008, after a two-month strike, the TA workload form that ensures that contract hours are equivalent to the amount of work required, as well as another significant pay increase.

Second, teaching assistants at the University of Toronto won increases to the guaranteed minimum funding packages for graduate students when they went on strike this year. They had initially won guaranteed minimum funding by striking in 2000.

This fall, students and workers across Quebec will be mobilizing against public funding cuts and increasing labour precarity. With other education sector workers also facing worsening working conditions, we will have opportunities for media exposure and solidarity actions with other workers. There is no better time to go on strike.

Voting for McGill’s offer will lock TAs into another four or more years of struggling to secure jobs to pay the bills, working unpaid overtime, and neglecting our studies and research to get second or third jobs to make ends meet. It will mean years of hard-to-reverse changes to undergraduate education as courses are cancelled or modified to provide little to no feedback for students or contact with instructors.

At AGSEM’s general assemblies over the past year, TAs have consistently demanded wages with which we can pay the bills and protections against declining TA hours. Our bargaining team did what it could to make those demands heard at the bargaining table. Now, it’s up to us to take a stand for ourselves, for future TAs, for current undergraduates, for the quality of education at McGill, and against the austerity mentality that is attacking education and public services across Canada. Negotiations at the bargaining table have come to an end. The only option left is to go on strike.

In addition to the authors’ active involvement in AGSEM in the past five years, Benjamin Elgie (also former chair of the Daily Publications Society), Megan Mericle, Sunci Avlijas, and rosalind hampton have held elected positions on AGSEM’s executive. Mona Luxion is also a former Daily columnist. To contact the authors, please email m.luxion@gmail.com.  

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Austerity is a political approach that prioritizes a balanced budget (in Quebec, “déficit zéro”) over social welfare, using cuts to social programs to offset the lost revenue caused by years of tax cuts for corporations and wealthy citizens. As Quebec’s funding for universities is repeatedly cut, McGill’s administration increasingly advocates corporate research partnerships as the solution. The pressure to seek external funding for research has led professors and graduate students to forge close ties with military contractors and even Canadian and foreign military agencies. Austerity further subjects university activities to the logic of the market, reducing claims of academic freedom and ethical research to empty words.

The connections between universities and the war machine are not new, especially at McGill, but austerity policies breathe new life into those ties.

While university funding is gutted, defence budgets remain nearly untouched by austerity policies. Though the federal government aims to cut $90 billion (nearly one third) of its budget between 2010 and 2017, the Department of National Defence has only reduced its overall spending by two per cent to date. Researchers seeking partnerships are thus increasingly pushed to get funding by conforming to the agendas of funding entities, including the military. This is exacerbated at McGill, where the office of Research and International Relations provides additional support to those projects most likely to bring in external funding.

It is no surprise that defence budgets stay high. Austerity costs jobs, increases inequality, and attacks government commitments like social safety nets, health and environmental regulations, as well as Indigenous sovereignty. The justified anger and resistance these measures bring about make an austerity budget impossible without increased surveillance and repression. Research at McGill helps police forces and domestic surveillance agencies use drones to more effectively surveil Canadian residents, and network analysis to better control social media and social movements.

As some faculties and programs adapt to the new economy, reconfiguring their program as uncritical job-training and their students as unpaid workers in the military-industrial complex, others will be starved and discounted until they have to close their doors. Universities around the world are already showing a trend of favouring certain programs, especially applied sciences, engineering, and business, over disciplines with fewer direct ties to industry, especially the humanities.

Austerity costs jobs, increases inequality, and attacks government commitments like safety nets, health and environmental regulations, as well as Indigenous sovereignty.

Where does this leave education? What remains is only what cultural critic Henry Giroux calls a “brutalist” and “pragmatic” university that positions students as cogs in a wheel rather than critical participants in society­ – let alone as curious and caring people who build knowledge as they build lives and communities. This functionalist model that is the product of austerity and militarization does not even ensure financial stability for the students involved, with research jobs outsourced to universities, the corporate sector can afford to make fewer and more temporary hires in-house. Faculty too are increasingly insecure, as tenured and tenure-track positions evaporate, and ever more courses are taught by precarious, poorly-paid contract workers.

How do we escape this agenda and reclaim education and the university from the gears of the military capitalist machine? Quite simply, we must refuse and resist to be made its subjects. Student resistance has begun strongly and must continue to grow. But the involvement of faculty is essential. In the interests of their students, of their disciplines, and of the world we are shaping, faculty must resist the lure of military funding: the strings attached pull their teaching and their students out of an educational environment and into a precarious, for-profit system. Faculty in disciplines outside the scope of the military-industrial reach are also integral to this struggle, as the same logic cuts funding to their departments – at McGill, this includes reducing academic and administrative positions, refusing to buy print materials for the libraries, and making access to the basic requirements to do their jobs contingent on external research funding. Austerity budgets and military collaboration are presented as inevitable. But with the commitment of faculty and students, we can resist both and build a community that values learning over profits.

Rachel Avery is a PhD student in Musicology, and Mona Luxion is a graduate student in Urban Planning. To reach them, email m.luxion@gmail.com.

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The term ‘intersectionality’ was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1991 to identify the fact that women of colour experience an intersection of racism and sexism that is more than the sum of its parts, while remaining marginalized in (white-dominated) feminist and (male-dominated) antiracist work. This context is important, because it situates the concept of intersectionality as a response to narrowly-framed identity politics, and a tool for better understanding the way in which oppression operates. It is an ironic illustration of Crenshaw’s point that her ideas are dismissed, and her name erased, in this white man’s vision of an ‘inclusive’ revolutionary theory.

Marginalized people experience extreme levels of violence to keep them in their place, while at the same time their bodies are treated as raw materials to be pillaged.

When Kinzey argues that intersectional politics play into the logic of capitalism by individualizing social problems, he betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how oppression works. His definition of exploitation purely in terms of the capitalist transactions between worker and boss ignores two key elements of capitalist exploitation. First, the unpaid labour that serves to support workers – and thus the entire system – and second, the systemic exclusion of certain people in order to regulate the availability of labour, create demand for everything from wedding rings to jail cells, and keep workers from revolting by reminding them that things could be worse. This unpaid labour and exclusion from education and job markets are made to appear natural because they are enacted along racial and gendered lines. Thus capitalism simultaneously relies on, and reinforces, racism and sexism, as well as the related systems of homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, anti-semitism, et cetera. Any coherent critique of, and resistance to capitalism must recognize these forces and their intersections.

Intersectional analysis enables us to build movements that are truly radical, by centring the experiences of those who are worst off in the current system.

These are not merely academic concerns. Though Kinzey uses sex work in a poorly thought-out example, he does not actually engage with the way that these intersecting power structures (primarily) impact the bodies of women and people of colour. Marginalized people experience extreme levels of violence to keep them in their place, while at the same time their bodies are treated as raw materials to be pillaged. The resulting traumas include disproportionate experiences of murder and assault, verbal harassment, the deprivations of poverty, as well as rape, slavery, and incarceration, and the less striking, but still exhausting, realities of sexual objectification, domestic labour, and constant discrimination. Although I focused here on race and gender, the profound importance of colonial exploitation in the development and continuation of capitalism must be recognized, and the intersections between colonialism and the oppressions described above could fill a book (or ten).

Given the highly differentiated experiences we have under capitalism, it is disingenuous to characterize the struggles of marginalized people to define liberation according to their own lived experiences as reformist. In fact, a revolutionary politics based in the experience of the prototypical worker (a white, abled man) is bound to be incomplete. In contrast, intersectional analysis enables us to build movements that are truly radical, by centring the experiences of those who are worst off in the current system. Unfortunately, Kinzey has rejected the analytical framework that could actually enable the fundamental revolution he claims to want, in favour of a reductionist vision of Marxism that has been found lacking time and again by theorists and activists of all stripes.

Mona Luxion wishes to acknowledge the wealth of conversations that have informed eir critique of this article and eir understanding of intersectional praxis as a whole. E is a PhD candidate in the School of Urban Planning and can be reached at m.luxion@gmail.com.

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As could be expected, the Bill 60 hearings rapidly disintegrated into a spectacle of unexamined privilege that is as grim as it is farcical. See, for example, Minister Bernard Drainville’s claim that accusations of racism do not belong in the hearing room, when the primary opposition to the bill lies specifically in disproportionate targeting of communities of colour. With little opportunity for meaningful debate and education within the official process, it is obvious that other actions are needed. But is wearing another religion’s headgear the best form for resistance to take?

For both the bill and the protest, religious clothing is treated as a removable symbol, rather than elements of cultural practice and identity which a person cannot simply cease to be between nine and five.

Professor Catherine Lu, one of the McGill professors who participated in Support Another this month, had proposed a similar action in September of last year, prompting a response in The Daily denouncing the potential for cultural appropriation (“Take it off,” Commentary, September 18). Indeed, treating religious items as costumes divorced from cultural meaning supports the logic underlying Bill 60. For both the bill and the protest, religious clothing is treated as a removable symbol, rather than elements of cultural practice and identity which a person cannot simply cease to be between nine and five.

The framing of this issue as one of free expression erases the fact that Bill 60 is a concrete manifestation of a particular sense of entitlement. Namely, it further institutionalizes the belief that white, Christian (whether culturally or practicing) people are full citizens entitled to, for example, a state made to fit them and in their image. The corollary is that Others are equal only to the extent that they adjust to fit in. When people who enjoy that full citizenship dress up in the clothing of those excluded, it does little to challenge the paradigm.

Unlike appropriating a hijab or turban, this action made visible the way in which some symbols are prosecuted while others are not.

Ironically, since it is not the hijab itself that will be banned, but rather objects which “overtly indicate a religious affiliation,” a Christian woman’s headscarf could be protected political speech while any head covering worn by a Muslim co-worker could be considered a sign of religiosity. In other words: is it not problematic that the most popular form of protest against Bill 60 by definition cannot be practiced by those directly affected?

Professor Arash Abizadeh presented a different take on the notion of donning a religious symbol on January 13. According to a Global TV report, Abizadeh spent the day walking around with a giant picture of the Mount Royal cross hung around his neck. Unlike appropriating a hijab or turban, this action made visible the way in which some symbols are prosecuted while others are not. Indeed, the text of Bill 60 repeatedly insists on exceptions for the preservation of Quebec’s presumably-Christian “cultural heritage,” erasing the longstanding presence of non-Christian communities in this province, including most notably the area’s Indigenous population. Still, even Abizadeh’s gesture is a purely symbolic step against a very real threat.

Although McGill’s administration has spoken out against the bill so far, their approach if it passes remains to be seen.

Assuming the bill is passed, it will be up to public institutions to develop policies for its implementation. Although McGill’s administration has spoken out against the bill so far, their approach if it passes remains to be seen. It seems unlikely that we’ll see the across-the-board crackdown that these protests are designed to make impossible to implement. More probably, regulations on wearing religious symbols will be deployed on an individual basis, a threat to keep troublemakers in line.

Ultimately, the University’s interests are not that different from those of the government. Both McGill and the Government of Quebec are colonial institutions invested in the preservation and perpetuation of a mindset that places the knowledge and values produced by white, Christian-European culture and people above all else. Dismantling the racist and variously oppressive structures that govern our University – from hiring practices to curriculum design to investment priorities and now, potentially, to employee dress codes – is an urgent and deeply important project. But it will take more than a few borrowed headscarves to do it.

Mona Luxion is a PhD student in the School of Urban Planning. They can be reached at m.luxion@gmail.com.

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In fact, the only thing this charter seems certain to do is make life more difficult for people whose religion and culture require certain forms of dress – most prominently Muslims, Jews, and Sikhs, and notably not the majority of Christians. As a result, this law does not unify people under a common umbrella of secularism, but in fact targets many religious people of colour and Jewish people for harassment, disciplinary sanctions, or difficult choices between employment, culture, and faith.

It can be tempting to see laws like this as a Quebecois problem, to point to Law 101 and the new charter as unique issues with the Parti Québecois and leave it at that. The national media has treated this as a provincial issue – one that might display a fundamental incompatibility of the Quebecois mindset with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But nationalism based on fear, hate, and exclusion is not unique to Quebec. Some have called the Charter “Putinesque” in reference to queer- and transphobic laws in Russia, highlighted by the coming winter Olympics in Sochi. Indeed, the laws against so-called “homosexual propaganda” have gotten attention recently, but Russia’s intolerance began with viciously anti-immigrant policies reaching back decades.

Across Europe, nationalist movements based on xenophobia and a myth of racial purity are gaining strength. Earlier this summer, the English Defence League organized large demonstrations across England on an anti-Muslim agenda, with an exclusionary ideal of Englishness. Even more frightening is the rise of the fascist Golden Dawn party in Greece, which now holds seats in Parliament, controls large elements of the police force, and is known to support armed attacks on immigrants as well as queer and trans* people, Roma, and other social “deviants.” It is not simply the presence and power of extremists that should worry us, but the ease with which these attitudes make their way into the mainstream.

Closer to home, a recent poll by Forum Research found that 42 per cent of Canadians agree with the proposed charter. Policy in Ottawa already reflects this attitude, with increasingly harsh bills attacking the rights of refugee claimants. The structure of Canadian immigration is shifting from one in which most immigrants had a chance at citizenship to one where immigrants are left in precarious, temporary situations with barely any rights.

This is a global trend. In times of economic crisis, people’s frustration and anger can easily be turned on convenient scapegoats rather than the true destroyers of our economy in high-powered, white collar positions. Identification based on whiteness and “nativeness” (co-opted from the actual native people of this land) has long been used to link white workers’ interests to those of the elite, rather than to those of their fellow workers of colour. But we know where this path can lead: not to economic success, but to the cruelties of the gulag and concentration camp. Hannah Arendt, the political theorist who spent much of her career trying to understand the origins of totalitarianism, points to the lack of critical thinking and debate as part of the route to accepting and perpetrating atrocities.

We must resist attempts to define “normal” or “worthy of rights” by skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or anything else. We must find ways to assert our differences without allowing them to mark some as subhuman. And where those attitudes are found – in our legislatures, our classrooms, our homes, and our streets – we must resist them, cutting them out like a cancer before they grow and metastasize.

Mona Luxion is a Ph.D student in the School of Urban Planning. They can be reached at m.luxion@gmail.com.

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A significant part of campus feminism is dedicated to countering this cultural trend. Reading the responses to the “I need feminism because…” campaign last year, I was struck by how many of them echoed concerns about rape and sexual assault. A similar trend can be seen in large parts of the feminist blogosphere, dominated by young middle-class white cis heterosexual women whose activism translates into book titles like Yes Means Yes and The Purity Myth, and actions like Slutwalk and the Hollaback website, on which women can post pictures of street harassers.

These concerns are legitimate. A majority of women (and, though the statistics are less clear, likely a majority of trans* people of all genders) experience sexual assault. These numbers skyrocket within already marginalized populations: Native women and women with disabilities, among others. I strongly believe in the necessity of both preventing future rapes and making the world safer for survivors to live in. The role of institutions like McGill’s student-run Sexual Assult Centre of McGill Students’ Society (SACOMSS), for example, is vitally important.

But a focus on ending rape and sexual assault as the be-all-end-all of feminism ignores the fact that what causes rape is not ‘rape culture’ but patriarchy. (Or, more specifically, kyriarchy: the intersecting mess of oppressions under which we live that includes racism, trans misogyny, ableism, colonialism, and so on.) The thing is that no matter how many times you repeat that rape is about power, by focusing on ‘rape culture’ you keep the focus off of power structures and on individual acts of assault.

Focusing feminism on rape centres the actions of one person against another person, rather than addressing systems that give certain classes of people power over others. Though talk of a ‘rape culture’ would suggest we are looking at systemic patterns, the way it is discussed focuses on changing an environment that encourages certain choices, rather than abolishing institutions that make such actions inevitable.

Women have been systematically dispossessed by institutions made up of powerful men, and pressed into dependent relationships with men due to economic need. Under a capitalist system that depends on a workforce that is desperate for cheap wage labour, social and legal frameworks were set up that made women responsible for providing male workers with comfort and pleasure at the end of the day – support and nourishment so the men can get back to work the next day. Relying on a strict gendered division of labour, these institutions also erased queer and/or trans* people’s very existence.

Although many of these institutions are currently undergoing transformations as other divisions of labour become more important, we are still very much living in their wake. Rape must be understood as an inherent part of a hierarchical system that teaches us not to see others as equally human, treats human relationships as essentially transactional, and has for centuries operated on the understanding that certain bodies exist purely to satisfy the greed and desires of others. Unfortunately, banning all the rape jokes in the world won’t change that.

Second, focusing on rape culture as the most visible example of women’s oppression ignores the many other ways that gendered oppression operates. A campus feminist movement that is profoundly upset at sexualized advertising but not at the administration’s attacks on salaries and pensions for MUNACA – a labour unit made up predominantly of women – is a campus feminist movement that is seriously missing something. Feminists who can rattle off ten ways men can stop rape, but have never paid attention to the way our immigration and deportation regime hurts women and queer and trans* people of all genders might want to take another look at where the problems lie.

Finally, focusing on rape as the worst possible form of oppression perpetuates problematic ideas about women’s sole virtue being their sexual purity. That is not at all to say that it is wrong to feel violated by rape or sexual assault, but that the obsession with rape as the most victimizing of experiences is problematic. Although for some people rape may be the worst thing that has ever happened to them, for others it is not, and perhaps we should start thinking of supporting all survivors of violence, whether rape or psychological abuse or systemic racism. This is particularly true given how commonly non-men are murdered by intimate partners, clients, or random misogynists.

While I share many of my fellow campus feminists’ desire to see the world free from oppression – including sexual violence – I suggest we take a look at the bigger picture to make sure our analyses and strategies for action respond to what’s really going on. Abandoning the simplistic framework of ‘rape culture’ is a necessary step in building an inclusive, truly transformative, feminist movement.

In Through the Looking Glass, Mona Luxion reflects on activism, current events, and looking beyond identity politics. Email Mona at lookingglass@mcgilldaily.com.

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9. Promise your friends you’ll ask them for support when you’re losing track of time and basic needs because your brain and body is fucked up with ongoing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

8. Promise them you’ll return the favour. Promise yourself to be honest with them when they need more support than you can give alone. Promise yourself to be honest with them when they need more care than they realize.

7. Cry. Crying flushes the pepper spray out of your eyes, blurs the images of riot cops that play incessantly when you close your eyes, bleeds the adrenaline from your body, and the physical pain, and the anxiety you feel about your friends, your lovers, your future.

6. Accept that All Cops Are B(insert non-patriarchal slur here), but that they’re worse to some people than to others. Look out for your comrades whom the cops love to target: women, people of colour, people with conditions or records, people who defy gender norms, people with disabilities. Known organizers. Consider the impacts of having rage-fuelled cops around for sex workers, homeless folks, folks who use intravenous drugs, and look for opportunities for solidarity.

5. Invite your friends to cuddle. Carry phone chargers so people who’ve been too out of it to go home don’t lose touch with their friends. Plan jail support.

4. Add Maalox (used with water as an anti-tear gas remedy), a lawyer’s number, a bandana and goggles, disinfectant, and Band-Aids to your bookbag. Take it everywhere you go.

3. Continue to dream. If we’re working for a revolution here, we don’t want the new world to look like the old. Let yourself imagine not just what that world looks like but how we get there.

2. Don’t talk to the cops. Do talk to your friends and family and classmates and everyone who loves you but doesn’t get it. Give yourself time for this. Find someone you can talk to and reteach yourself how to have conversations that aren’t about strategy or slogans or where they took the people they arrested. Remind yourself that this, too, is resistance.

1. Celebrate a diversity of tactics. Cheer when the windows of mega corporations are destroyed. Also cheer when someone does the dishes that fed hundreds of people with wholesome, collectively-made food. Cheer when court battles allow people to stay in the country or stay out of jail.

0. Be strategic. Make chaos for capitalism. Protect yourself from the cops that defend the crumbling world order and reclaim the streets for a life not ordered by their demands. Remember that the battle between protesters and cops is but a small part of where the struggle between humanity and capitalism plays out, and never mistake the battle for the war.

In Through the Looking Glass, Mona Luxion reflects on activism, current events, and looking beyond identity politics. Email Mona at lookingglass@mcgilldaily.com.

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The following is a short field guide to identifying various strategies for activism, including definitions, and examples of tactics used to achieve them:

Education

Education can be useful when the change you want to see can be achieved through individual behaviour (for example, getting people to no longer make hurtful comments and assumptions about a marginalized group), or as a way of getting more people to participate in some other form of activism. This sentiment is often expressed as: “If only people knew about this, they’d be outraged!”

Unfortunately education, though useful, is rarely an adequate mechanism for change in and of itself.

Examples: Social Justice Days; the SSMU Equity conference; teach-ins such as Climate Justice Montreal’s one-day conference on the Line 9 pipeline last month; informal conversations among friends.

Research

Activist research can serve to uncover information that would be useful for educational purposes, so it is often paired with the kinds of tactics described above. Sometimes research can serve to develop alternative solutions to the ones being proposed; at other times, it can be useful for developing more effective strategies for activism. Finally, people like Aaron Swartz make the mere ability to do research and have access to information the central point of their activism.

Examples: The investigative journalism done at The Daily; the Independent Student Inquiry into November 10, 2011; Access to Information requests filed by students, faculty, or staff; the work of the Community University Research Exchange (CURE).

Advocacy

Advocacy involves working within a decision-making system to convince someone to make a decision you would like to see. This can include educating them, suggesting alternative solutions, or, in the case of elected officials, using the threat of losing votes in the future. It can often include a show of numbers, suggesting that ‘the people have spoken’ on an issue. In a labour relations setting, the process of bargaining for a collective agreement includes similar elements.

Examples: The petition submitted by Divest McGill to McGill’s Committee Advising on Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR) to divest from fossil fuels; large permitted rallies intended to show support or opposition to a cause; participation in the upcoming summit on education.

Pressure tactics

These are some of the most misunderstood tactics in the activist toolkit. I use the term ‘pressure tactics’ instead of the not-quite-synonymous term ‘direct action’, because it lays the strategic aim of these tactics right out in the title. The goal of employing pressure tactics is to put pressure on a body that has the ability to make the change you want: in other words, making it so costly not to make that change that they are forced to cut their losses and concede. That may sound harsh, but keep in mind that many of the most serious problems in the world are not caused by ignorance but by greed and self-centeredness. Many activists turn to pressure tactics only after having exhausted other means, but when those other means have been tried and failed, pressure tactics become necessary.

Because of the system we live in, the kind of pressure applied is almost always economic. A labour strike causes economic pressure by depriving an industry of its labour, while a boycott of a toxic corporation hurts them by cutting their revenue and profits. Blockades and intentionally disruptive protests shut down key economic interests or simply reduce a workforce’s ability to get to work, lowering productivity and thus the government’s likely tax revenue. Even an action like Divest McGill’s Valentine’s Day break-up with the oil industry puts economic pressure on McGill by threatening to tarnish their reputation.

Although more visible forms of attack on productivity are often singled out by the media – things like property destruction that costs money to repair, or people chaining themselves to equipment in order to halt work – in fact, all pressure tactics are sabotage. The purpose of pressure tactics is specifically to make business as usual impossible. So impossible, in fact, that one is forced to deviate from it permanently. Only then can whatever change activists are working toward be assured.

In conclusion, then, I just want to draw attention to the sorts of activism that are permitted under McGill’s proposed Statement of Values and Principles and the operating procedures that accompany it. Education and advocacy seem to be okay, so long as the proper tone of civility is maintained and it all occurs within acceptable channels. Research, though not prohibited by the Statement, is coming under attack through McGill’s motion to deny students’ Access to Information requests. Pressure tactics of any sort, however, are explicitly prohibited, not just by the operating procedures but by the guiding principles themselves, which set out to protect people’s ability to carry out the activities of the university. This is, in fact, a ban on all effective protest and by extension a ban on making any change the administration does not already agree with. Are we willing to put up with that?

In Through the Looking Glass, Mona Luxion reflects on activism, current events, and looking beyond identity politics. Email Mona at lookingglass@mcgilldaily.com.

The post A field guide to activism appeared first on The McGill Daily.

As students, we tend to think that the university is about us. After all, from our first moments of thinking about applying to schools, universities are courting us. We are both their primary clients and their most important products, they tell us. Universities exist to provide a service to us: just think what you could do with a university degree!

The fact is, of course, that even if that was true fifty years ago it is most certainly not true now. And the University’s administrators make no secret of it, if you step outside the glossy advertising brochures and back-to-school MROs. At the end of last semester PGSS and SSMU put on a McGill-centric education summit to get a sense of where the McGill community stands on all sorts of issues related to university education. The format was unfortunately far from interactive, and the voices of the administration overpowered those of students, but it was an interesting opportunity to hear about McGill’s strategic objectives in a way that we rarely do as students.

I was particularly interested in a session on partnerships between the university and corporations. Although universities have always done research that benefitted the private sector, direct partnerships with corporations are becoming an increasingly prominent part of what universities do – and how they fund themselves. In fact, a much-overlooked part of the university funding plan that spurred last year’s student strike was the expectation that universities raise more of their operating funds from corporate partners – even going so far as to make some public funding dependent on universities’ ability to raise private funds.

In her presentation on the topic of these partnerships, Vice President (Research and International Relations) Rose Goldstein made it clear that all contracts signed with corporate partners include an academic freedom clause making sure that researchers can publish their findings whether the corporate funders like them or not. (McGill’s track record on asbestos research raises questions on whether this is always enforced, but that’s a different story.) That freedom is essential to scientific integrity, of course, but it hardly addresses the full ethical picture.

Imagine a university – a “research-intensive” university, to use that term the administration loves so much – that exists mostly to do research that others pay for. In the Department of Mining  and Materials Engineering, researchers supported by grants from De Beers, Barrick Gold, and other giant mining corporations investigate more efficient techniques for extracting highly toxic minerals from often-contested lands. In Mechanical Engineering, a professor researches de-icing technology that he then markets to military contractors through a business he owns. Speaking to the University Senate, the head of research urges faculty to look at the priorities of the university’s funders and tailor their research questions accordingly. The University wants them to get these grants, she says, and is putting all sorts of resources at their disposal. Meanwhile, who is funding research into the environmental impacts of tar sands extraction or the neocolonial causes of war? Freedom to publish adverse findings does not guarantee freedom to ask challenging questions, nor does it ensure university resources are made available to support the development of such projects in the first place.

The paragraph above is not a dystopian fantasy. All of those things are currently happening at McGill. At the same time, 100 Arts classes are being cut to save money, leading to fewer of the small seminars in which we get to hone our critical thinking skills and ask the broader questions. (Full disclosure: I’m actually in Engineering, so they aren’t my classes that are being cut. But students in all faculties need small classes.) Dr. Goldstein assures us that McGill is “very strong” in the areas of Arts and Social Sciences, but then admits that there are no specific safeguards in place to prevent endlessly pitching public money after private, as the university invests more and more in the areas it sees as prime candidates for developing profitable partnerships.

The buzzwords that keep coming up are “keeping McGill competitive.” But what are we competing on? Like the most reckless financial players on Wall Street, McGill’s administrators deal in numbers that no longer have any bearing in reality. Cutting classes to increase the percentage taught by tenured professors increases your rankings but does zilch for the quality of your education. Redirecting resources to support partnerships with business, rather than supporting less profitable research projects might make McGill number one on a chart in some investor’s office, but it probably won’t get us closer to solving the big problems our society needs to deal with.

As we discuss the state of our universities and our education system here in Quebec, these are the sorts of issues we ought to be tackling. Making budget sheets balance is great, but unless we are questioning not only the line items on the budget but the priorities behind them, our universities will continue to be dysfunctional: state-subsidized non-profits that aspire to be publicly-traded corporations, and end up failing miserably at both. I don’t want a top-ranked university that is internationally competitive across the world, I want a university that provides me and my society with the ideas, tools, and knowledge that we need to live well together – now and generations into the future. Perhaps you agree with me.

SSMU Council’s proposal for an états généraux on education brings us closer to discussing these goals than any part of the government-mandated Summit process has or will. But these conversations need to be happening not only in our legislatures and closed-off conference rooms, but in our living rooms, newspapers, streets, and, of course, in our universities. Which is why it is particularly concerning that the McGill administration has decided to bypass any further consultation or even a Senate vote on their new “operational procedures” regarding protests and disruptions on campus. With nowhere to discuss our goals for the education system, and no way to express our dissent with the effects of those imperatives, we may well wonder if the University is past saving as a useful societal institution. If, like me, you believe there may still be some redeeming value here, then we’d best get to work fanning it up into flames, because it’s well on its way to being muffled.

In Through the Looking Glass, Mona Luxion reflects on activism, current events, and looking beyond identity politics. Email Mona at lookingglass@mcgilldaily.com.

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All snarking aside, I think those of us who think of ourselves as activists, leftists, progressives, or just all-around tolerant people, need to talk about allyship. Being an ally means supporting the struggles of those who experience a form of oppression you benefit from.

Rule number one is that you listen to the people you’re supporting. You can offer your support, but it’s up to them. They owe you nothing.
Recently, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair urged Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence to end her hunger strike, because in his judgement Stephen Harper’s government had taken “a step in the right direction.” No one asked for Mulcair’s advice. As a white man and as a politician, his opinion is usually given more weight than that of other people, especially that of a Native woman. Instead of helping Chief Spence and those he claims to support, he decided that being an ‘ally’ gave him the right to say “this far, and no farther.” That is not allyship, it is entitlement.

Idle No More is a series of events in a long history of struggle for self-determination and decolonization on Turtle Island. Although the demands around Bill C-45 are important, we potential supporters need to be aware that this struggle doesn’t end there. Like all liberation struggles, the fight for the liberation of the Native peoples of this continent will not be over until the structures of power that oppress them are destroyed. Those of us who benefit from those structures will not survive intact.

Should decolonization succeed within his lifetime, Thomas Mulcair, MP, head of the NDP, will no longer exist. Neither will I. (I’m rather looking forward to it.) That is not to imply death or deportation, though either would be payback for centuries of genocide. Rather, the systems of knowledge we believe in, the customs we abide by, the institutions we inhabit, the economy we depend on, the languages we speak, the identities we claim; all of these are colonial artifacts. Even de-centering them from their assumed positions of neutrality and dominance would shake us to the core. But their place on this continent (and ours by extension) is unearned, and their displacement is a necessity.

This is what we sign up for when we decide to work for the liberation of others. This is not just a matter of keeping the pie intact and giving some oppressed group a slightly bigger slice. Equality and justice require such massive transformations that those of us who benefit from privileges due to our race, gender, ethnicity, class, ability, sexuality, or anything else will lose ourselves along the way.

But we need not assume that just because others are gaining something we will be worse off. Change is difficult, of course, and even losing things you didn’t need anymore can hurt. But we have a lot to gain. In a recent blog post, Angus Johnston, a historian and advocate of student activism, wrote about how being asked to name his preferred pronouns – a first step towards trans* liberation –  gave him a sense of possibility and freedom, even though he generally benefits from everyone assuming his gender correctly.

Liberation struggles are, first and foremost, necessary for people who experience oppression. Obviously. But those of us with various privileges can also benefit from freedom from the structures we’ve been bound up in. Only, getting there requires listening to people we’re not used to hearing when they say things we don’t want to hear, holding our tongue when we want to claim ‘but we’re not all like that,’ standing up to our powerful friends and colleagues when they perpetuate oppression, and yes, embracing our own destruction.

On that last point, a note: saying “Yo, fuck white people” doesn’t erase your white privilege. Believing that you, as a straight person, shouldn’t speak for queer people doesn’t absolve you from standing up to the homophobes in your classroom who take your silence for approval. Being politically correct is not enough, but shifting our thinking from aiming to be inoffensive to wanting to advance liberation can be a big step in actually getting there. Hear that, Mr. Mulcair?

In Through the Looking Glass, Mona Luxion reflects on activism, current events, and looking beyond identity politics. Email Mona at lookingglass@mcgilldaily.com.

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I first became an activist when I was nine or ten: residents of a wealthy neighbourhood had decided to assert control over public parks that happened to be close by, trying to ban volunteers who had been restoring those same natural areas to health over the years. With friends, family, and fellow volunteers, I wrote letters and attended county board meetings, speaking out against the blatant hijacking of public space by a tiny but vocal minority. We had greater numbers and scientific backing on our side, and we played by the rules. I couldn’t understand why, even so, they won.

Years later, after 9/11, I marched against increasingly ludicrous calls to war from the U.S. government. Neither the international outcry, the editorials pointing out lies about weapons of mass destruction, or our small pacifist vigils made any difference. At larger demonstrations, I feared that the people in black chanting “resistance is justified when people are occupied” would scare off public opinion. If we appealed to common sense and shared values, I believed, opinion polls would show opposition to the war, and surely someone in the Bush administration would realize it was a bad electoral strategy. We all know how that worked out.

I had tough conversations about vegetarianism, debating the pros and cons of eating meat that was raised as ethically as possible, versus soy that is shipped halfway around the world and contributes to global warming, the destruction of traditional agriculture, and farmer suicides in India. I realized that violence and destruction are an inextricable part of life, and started making moral decisions based on what would cause the least harm in the end, rather than an arbitrary ban on the most visible forms of violence.

The financial crisis of 2008 came around, and with it, an entire industry of trying to explain complicated financial practices. But I’ve never understood the underlying principle: the drive for profit. I get that if you’re running a shop, say, you need to make enough to buy your supplies wholesale, and to pay the rent, and to pay your employees or support yourself. But why is it considered a moral virtue to want to make more than that? Why is it considered necessary for the economy to grow faster than the population, except in order to satisfy investors’ greed?

I guess I was ready, when I started hanging out with socialists, to listen to their critiques. And although I didn’t agree with all their solutions, what they had to say about capitalism made a lot of sense. I agreed with the idea we should value sharing rather than the survival of the ‘fittest.’ And their arguments about needing radical change rather than reform were only confirmed when I started working around lobbyists and my last illusions about elected representatives being beholden to their electorate were shattered.

I spent time on feminist and social justice blogs, where I learned theories and terms that confirmed what I’d always known: that life was a heck of a lot harder for some people than others based on their race, their gender, and histories and systems outside their control. Reading people’s stories and reflections taught me that one-size-fits-all answers always privilege some and leave others behind.

But national governments are clearly too far away to take into account the particularities of each individual’s life. At the same time, I was reading climate change literature that pointed toward small, self-reliant communities as the only scale that would be adaptive enough to deal with a future of changeable weather and inevitable conflict. Visiting New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, I saw that mutual aid had helped people much more than government assistance, which was at best slow and mired in bureaucracy, at worst, destructive.

So when I met people working to build decentralized, locally-rooted communities of mutual aid, who rejected oppressive hierarchies, believed capitalism to be a major part of the problems in our world, and understood that the relationships between violence and power need more than simple yes/no answers, it felt like coming home. When I found out they were anarchists, I was scared: would they turn out, in fact, to be destructive nihilists? But instead they helped me rediscover values I’d half-forgotten in the rat-race: share, don’t be selfish, listen, speak up when someone’s being hurt, don’t follow rules without knowing why, money can’t buy the important things, being yourself is awesome, and yes, you can build the world you want to live in.

In Through the Looking Glass, Mona Luxion reflects on activism, current events, and looking beyond identity politics. Email Mona at lookingglass@mcgilldaily.com.

The post How I was betrayed by liberal democracy appeared first on The McGill Daily.

State recognition of marriages between people of the same legal gender is almost always described by its proponents in terms of progressivism and equality. In fact, the branding has been so effective that in some circles the word “equality” has come to mean same-sex marriage legalization – to the exclusion of any other, more substantive, meaning.

Now, I absolutely think anyone should be able to solemnize their relationship(s) in whatever way they see fit. I was honoured this past weekend to celebrate the love shared by two of my good friends; I am equally proud to belong to a religious community that has on various occasions crafted ceremonies for the celebration of poly families, queer partnerships, and even newfound single-hood. And this is where the rhetoric of equality and inclusion used to justify same-sex marriage campaigns breaks down.

Fundamentally, marriage as an institution is not about equality. It serves, in its legal form, to confer rights on certain kinds of families that are not conferred on others. In this sense, those who advocate for including same-sex partners in the grand old club of legally-condoned serial monogamy are basically saying “sure, we may be gay, but for god’s sake we’re not perverts!” In demanding that sexual orientation be no obstacle to the enjoyment of the government benefits marriage provides, gay marriage activists are breaking from their more marginalized allies in the fight against oppressive gender and sexual norms.

There is no compelling reason for why society should reward monogamous sexual relationships over other relationships between consenting adults, such as other forms of sexual relationships, as well as friendships, mentorships, and the like. The modern institution of marriage has grown out of a system developed to distribute women as property and to legally establish heredity for the purpose of inheritance. It has, I should hope, long outlived its relevance.

Moreover, in order to benefit from marriage – beyond warm fuzzy feelings, at least – one must already hold certain privileges in society. Leaving aside the fact that serial monogamy is not for everyone, same-sex marriage leaves behind the undocumented and trans* folks for whom hospital visitation rights are not even an issue because they are unlikely to even be allowed to access hospital services, to name just one example. The immigration benefits of same-sex marriage only accrue to people who are lucky enough to have met and married someone with citizenship – while queer asylum seekers are turned away because their grievances are not considered threatening enough. If the goal is assimilation for some, same-sex marriage campaigns have been wildly successful. If the goal is, instead, ensuring that people aren’t denied rights they should have, then the strategy must be to break down the barriers that restrict those rights to a few people, not to demand inclusion within that enclosure.

Marriage will have become queer-friendly only when the state is no longer invested in regulating and judging who we’re sleeping with (which is to say, when it no longer exists). Queers and our allies who are truly committed to equality for all families would do better to band with others who are also hurt by exclusive definitions of ‘proper’ family structure: immigrant families, families affected by incarceration and detention, Native families living through colonialist violence, and families targeted for intervention by ‘child welfare’ systems. But I suppose that work won’t make the headlines.

In Through the Looking Glass, Mona Luxion reflects on activism, current events, and looking beyond identity politics. Email Mona at lookingglass@mcgilldaily.com.

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So here’s an attempt to introduce some of the language you’ll find among these pages, and the concepts from which it springs. It can be hard to wrap your head around some of the language, since it deals in probabilities that aren’t how most of us are used to thinking about ourselves, but it can ultimately be really useful for understanding the world.

We start from the fact that there is inequality in our society, not just in outcomes, but in opportunities. A look around you – or better, a Google Scholar search, or a study of census data – will show that people of colour, women, and other historically marginalized groups continue to be much less likely to be successful than white men. Since most of us realize that someone’s race or gender doesn’t actually affect how smart, talented, or hard-working they are, there must be something else going on.

That “something else,” which we call systemic oppression, happens in three ways. First, there are outright discriminatory actions: a law explicitly gives different rights to Native versus non-Native people; a landlord suddenly decides their apartment isn’t available after they learn the single bedroom will be shared by two men. Because we’re looking at population-level distributions of opportunity, we’re interested in those actions which reinforce the existing inequalities. Actions that correct, rather than exacerbate, unequal life chances may be prejudiced but they aren’t oppressive.

Secondly, policies applied “equally” across the board work to reinforce this discrimination. For example, a law school basing admission on LSAT scores unjustly privileges people who have time and money to take test prep classes, even though nothing in the admissions handbook explicitly discriminates based on wealth. This becomes a self-perpetuating cycle when those people get well-paid jobs that help their kids get similar opportunities. Because of these sorts of cycles, even though most forms of legal discrimination have been abolished in this country vast inequalities remain.

This doesn’t mean that no one beats the odds – far from it. But looking at it systemically, your race, gender, sexual orientation, mental and physical ability, and class background, to name just a few, have a huge impact on how likely you are to have opportunities and how likely you are to succeed at them.

Third, institutions in our society constantly define “normal” people. Children’s authors are told that girls will identify with male characters but not the reverse, meaning that most of the representations we see of people doing cool stuff from an early age feature males. Government benefits depend on certain definitions of family, sex, or citizenship. Advertising teaches us that “successful” people are white, French-/English-speaking, cisgender, able-bodied, and straight. The relativity we’re sold of what society looks like means that people who fit the norm are likely to be treated as three-dimensional people while those who don’t are singled out by their Otherness and treated as stereotypes. It also means that those of us who don’t fit the norm are more likely to face mental illness and self-esteem issues.

In Dailyspeak, benefiting from the systems above is privilege. Like oppression, it is an imperfect term, but it’s what we’ve got. We often experience both: I face sexism, for example, but benefit from white privilege. Noticing where we have privilege and working to overturn those systems brings us to a more equal, democratic distribution of power.

But that’s another lesson, and I’m out of space for today.

Class dismissed!

In Through the Looking Glass, Mona Luxion reflects on activism, current events, and looking beyond identity politics. Email Mona at lookingglass@mcgilldaily.com.

The post Dailyspeak: an introduction appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Until recently, the rules for voting in a GA were straightforward: one person, one vote. Anyone can present a motion, and anyone can second it. If you can’t make it to the assembly, take it up at the next one. Simple. But with a rash of GAs actually accomplishing things this spring, certain factions pushed through motions that would fundamentally change the character of general assemblies by putting voting online.

Now, I’ve been to a fair number of GAs, and here’s the thing: I’m basically never an expert on all of the topics discussed, and, in some cases, I don’t even have an opinion going in. But because of the unique structure of GAs, in which people get up to speak for and against the motions proposed, I always learn something in the process. And even on topics I feel passionate about, I’ve supported amendments that would scale back a particularly strong position when it becomes clear that a more moderate stand would better represent the feeling of the room. I’ve seen others do the same. Because in the end, the point of a GA is to make decisions collectively.

None of this can happen in the same way online. If you’ve spent any time looking at The Daily’s comment sections online, you’ll understand why I’m skeptical of our community’s ability to speak to each other respectfully and listen to each other thoughtfully enough to actually change each others’ minds on the internet. Up- and down-votes don’t give nearly as much useful feedback as a room full of people nodding along or glaring at you. More practically, within a GA, people typically use a process of discussion and amendment to get to positions a majority of voters can get behind. With voting extended online, some voters will have heard arguments from their classmates, asked clarifying questions, thought about the issues together, and perhaps even introduced amendments to the motions, while others will vote with a single yes/no click as if it were a referendum. Do you believe that both of those votes carry the same weight? I’m not at all convinced.

Proponents of online voting argued that requiring people to be physically present at a GA in order to vote discriminates against those who can’t be there. The solution to this problem is not to weaken GAs by turning them into referenda, but instead to hold more general assemblies. Members of SSMU need more than one opportunity per semester to make their voices heard on the issues that matter to them. Students in various departments could accomplish a lot more by holding monthly GAs within their majors rather than by griping about the limited course offerings, unfair profs, and lack of student space. If GAs become a regular occurrence at the departmental, faculty, and university-wide levels, missing one won’t be a big deal. Moreover, GAs will be shorter and thus more accessible by not trying to handle the entire semester’s business in one go.

At the same time, for everyone to want to participate in assemblies they must be places where the loudest voices don’t dominate the conversation and shut out marginalized people. As we go into the upcoming SSMU GA and those of other clubs, services, and associations, let’s adopt anti-oppressive rules for our discussions and ask moderators to seek out the contributions of women and gender minorities, people of colour, first-year students, and those who simply haven’t spoken up as much. Those changes will do a million times more for the equity of our GAs than any online votes.

In Through the Looking Glass, Mona Luxion reflects on activism, current events, and looking beyond identity politics. You can email Mona at lookingglass@mcgilldaily.com.

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