Throughout her career at The Weekly, Nochill held all of her resentment towards the world inside of her. She was quiet. She was introspective. But that was 2016. Nochill came back in 2k17 with full force, bursting into the office in the sub-basement of the SHMU Building, declaring: “NEW YA, NEW MOI!!!!” She was brassy. She was assertive. She was done with pseudo-intellectual ‘noise artist’ bros who threw around the word ‘neoliberal.’ When asked about this “new her,” she replied “I’m leaving old Cecile behind. New Cecile is louder, sassier, and just doesn’t give a shit. New Cecile will finally teach that entitled white boy in her conference about nuance! Her new mission is to have softboys fear her. I am done.”

However, Nochill confessed she wasn’t altogether done with the future: “I’m starting a brown girl only reading club where we get together and are able to share complexed, fully-formed, nuanced thoughts on socialist political theory, without being interrupted by a ‘well, actually…’ We also share receipts of softboys that wronged us. There are chants. We hold hands. There are also free samosas.”

Fed up with no one believing that she’s sworn softboys off for good, and being in the mood to dish out some receipts, Nochill offered the crowd of friends and curious onlookers highlights from her short, yet expansive, encounters with that softboy who usually sits in the corner of your conference section, plays bass in a shoegaze band, wears a baseball cap backwards and is probably from Toronto (or Maine). “I live for drama,” she whispered, before she began recalling her worst encounters with these boys:

“Was Lenin a Marxist?”
”Did you know Beyonce perpetuates corporate feminism?”
“So, I’m an ecofeminist.”
“So, do you ferment your own Kombucha?”
“Reverse racism”
“I recently read Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, have you heard of her?”
“Do you wanna go to a David Lynch documentary screening together?”
“I’m kind of over the New York scene”
“Hey sorry it’s not you, I’m just in a rough place right now and trying to figure my life out”

The brown girls only reading club is a far off venture. For now, Cecil Nochill will fill up her time with a Wes Anderson marathon (not The Darjeeling Limited though) and spend her time at home with her parents, who will guilt her about being a halfway activist because they went to one anti-Trump march in Toronto. She still keeps a small photograph of Marx in her wallet.

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“We are befuddled by this rise in white tears,” said StatsMcGall head coordinator Bevan Jerry, himself a student and activist on campus, and a self-identified witness to many white tears. “We thought they had reached their apex last year after students voted overwhelmingly to adopt a motion at the SHMU Winter General Assembly to set up an ‘an actual safe space for BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of colour] students on campus.’” The motion failed online ratification shortly after. According to the study, cis white male tears account for around 95 per cent of the overall increase of white tears on campus.

Baroness Forte started chanting “All Lives Matter!” shortly after the announcement of the updated campus white tears index. Her chant was greeted with scattered applause and scowls from students of colour who were caught off guard by yet another microaggression, as they simply wanted to “get to class without having to be constantly reminded that McGall doesn’t give a shit about us,” according to bystander and campus activist Chantal Jules.

In an interview with The Weekly, Jules highlighted that the most recent instance of the resurgence of white tears on campus is the petition “We’re Relevant Too,” on the popular website www.change?.net. The petition calls on SHMU to ratify the We Love Legal Procedure Board’s decision that setting up a safe space in SHMU “just for BIPOC” is unconstitutional. The petition, the launch of which coincided with International Day of Peace, stated “white students on campus are uncomfortable with recent divisive politics,” and that they “don’t see race or colour” – echoing Marc Jacobs’ historic announcement following criticism of the white models with dreadlocks used in his show earlier this week.

“Being back home in the Middle East this summer really made me forget about white people,” said student activist Rami Shmalek. “I got so used to not being told by white people that I’m being ‘too emotional’ or ‘reverse racist’ when I was pointing out human rights abuses to them […] When I landed at King Trudeau International Airport earlier this month and saw all these white people, I said to myself, ‘Shit, I’m going to have to do some readjusting.’ This morning’s announcement was a stark reminder of that too.”

Bevan Jerry, also a self-identified BIPOC ally, said that the StatsMcGall results should not distract the administration from listening to its BIPOC students as well. “Yes, there is a significant increase of white tears and we should address that, but the McGall administration can’t only concern itself with these tears. What about others?”

When approached for comment after the semi-successful Block Party, Baroness Forte seemed confused. “I had no idea students were this upset,” she declared. When asked whom she meant by “students,” she replied, “well… the white ones, that’s where all the tears are coming from, right? We should probably do some damage control.” However, it remains to be seen whether this damage control involves throwing BIPOC students under the bus, again.

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“Let them have their fun, that’s what university is all about, isn’t it?” said the Dean of Students, fiddling with his giant tarantula puppet glove. “And as long as the students don’t get too close to the administration building,” said the Baroness, finishing the Dean’s sentence.

When asked how the University treats reports of threats being mailed to McGall student activists, the Principal replied that “it is not within the University’s mandate to interfere in our students’ private lives – that makes us no better than CSIS, and those people are bad, right?”

“Listen, we just want to have a quiet year, is that too much to ask?” said a member of the McGall Board of Guv’nors, who also sits on the Committee to Deny Matters of Social Responsibility, in a phone interview with The Weekly when asked about the decision. “Kids these days should just keep their heads in the books instead of worrying about the tar sands or nonsense like that. Not on my watch.”

“Another year, another disappointment,” said the President of SHMU Bren Vander Gur, after a letting out a long sigh of exasperation. “It’s bad enough they didn’t tell us every paved street on campus was going to be dug up again to check for ‘plumbing,’” he scoffed, “psh, plumbing, as if.”

We, at The McGall Weekly editorial board, also had a slight crisis at the sudden news. “We seem to have lost all reason for existence,” cried one editor, caught in a moment of despair, “if there’s no radical, leftist, activism on campus, what are we going to report on?!”

“We need to find a way to break our lease agreement with SHMU, no reason in paying thousands to rent our office anymore,” piped in another editor.

The statement ended in a show of support for our investors. “Don’t worry, we’ve got your back, no one’s going to hurt you now,” Forte said. This decision on behalf of the administration marks a benchmark step in what Forte called the “conversion” of the University into a full-fledged private business. “We’re hoping to completely privatize by 2020,” she declared.

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