A visit from the Provost

Provost Anthony Masi – whose position encompasses roles as both chief academic officer and chief budget officer of the University – made a guest appearance, and took the opportunity to take questions from graduate students and outline McGill’s strategic vision for the next few years.

One question aimed to determine if McGill was going to take any action to improve the state of graduate student supervision.

“Supervision is the single most important issue on campus,” said Masi, indicating that the data from anonymous surveys of graduate students signals that improving the quality of graduate supervision is a standout issue.

The University has begun its campaign to improve supervision with a new webpage that states the roles and responsibilities of a supervising professor and provides resources on interaction with supervisees and “recognizing student diversity.”

“This list of skill sets will be later included in staff training days,” said Masi, adding that “most of the time, professors forget that they were once graduate students too.”

His presentation, meanwhile, centred on the University’s actions regarding recent budget cuts and allocations – cuts that have, among other outcomes, closed down libraries and resulted in incentivized retirement programs for staff.

Outlining the finances of the University, Masi said, “Over the last two years, we’ve added $30 million in deficit to our operating budget. But we have to pay that deficit back in five years, which means that we have to balance our books, and $5 million a year has to be used to pay back that deficit.”

Masi also outlined the mentality underlying budget cuts.

“You have to make a decision about allocations based on your academic priorities,” Masi said. “Those priorities come out of Achieving Strategic Academic Priorities (ASAP), the University’s academic white paper.”

Moving on to McGill’s financial situation, the Provost focused on choices about budget allocation.

“What we’re asking all of the units to do is not to try to replicate what they were doing before [the cuts] but to make conscious choices,” Masi said. “Do we have to do everything we’re doing? Can we do the things that we are doing differently? How can we be more efficient in the way we work?”

Electoral Reform

PGSS also finalized the remainder of the rewriting of some electoral rules. This was part of an effort to resolve contradictions between the society’s practices and their activities manual.

According to PGSS Secretary-General Jonathan Mooney, “We wanted everything to be crystal clear so as to make sure that no one was doubting our legitimacy – we don’t want to appear to be an illegitimate students’ society.”

PGSS’ Chief Returning Officer (CRO) Colby Briggs confirmed that, “The intent of these changes was, by and large, to bring the Society’s Activities Manual in line with practical application.”

He added that a mechanism was added for the CRO to enforce electoral regulations by penalizing rule-breaking candidates through “financial or time-based incentives” (in other words, fines or volunteer hours), instead of disqualifying them.

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McGill Writing Centre

The first referendum question on which post-graduates will vote will be whether or not they support paying a $1.50 fee per term in support of the McGill Writing Centre.

The Writing Centre’s representative, Julien Ouellet, said that the Centre’s survival is on the line, adding that McGill ended up not providing this service to students that every university “from Harvard to U [University of] Sherbrooke” has.

The sum would be enough to ensure its survival – a “no-brainer,” he concluded – and would also ensure the continuation of one-on-one tutorial services for grad students. Without the fee, those services would be terminated. In October’s meeting, Council voted against a motion amending the PGSS budget for a one-time transfer of $3,000 to the Centre for tutor wages.

McGill Tribune

Post-graduates will also resolve whether or not to pay $0.75 per student per semester to the McGill Tribune. The money will go toward “bolstering our publication by enhancing the services that we already have,” according to the Tribune’s representative and former editor-in-chief Elisa Muyl.

The extra funds would go toward financing a smartphone and tablet application and a graduate student focus within the paper’s pages, as well as training initiatives such as writers’ workshops.

Post-doctoral fee for student services

The third question facing post-graduates in the referendum concerns McGill’s body of close to 600 post-doctoral fellows (or post-docs). With the fee question, post-docs will be voting whether or not to pay a mandatory fee to be included under the purview of student services. For full-time post-docs, this entails a monthly fee of $22.74 – or $136.46 per semester – that would enable them to access all services that fall under McGill’s Student Services umbrella.

At the moment, post-docs can access these services on an individual basis if they opt to pay the current Student Services Fee ($156.89 per semester). This makes it more expensive, and also means that service staff are not trained to cater to the post-doctoral student body’s specific needs.

In the event of a “Yes” vote, post-docs would be able to take full advantage of services such as Career and Planning Services, Health Services, and Financial and International Services.

“All these are things that other graduate students would take for granted but that we can’t access at the moment,” said Emma Vincent, president of the Association of Postdoctoral Fellows (APF), pointing out that the Quebec government designates post-docs as students, but since they have PhDs and teach classes, they are in “limbo” between the statuses of student and professor.

She also added that in the event of a “Yes” vote, PGSS and the APF would work together with the administration to transfer some or all of the cost of this monthly fee to post-docs’ supervisors.

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Post-graduate life

In his Secretary’s report, PGSS Secretary-General Jonathan Mooney said that steps had been taken to ensure the even distribution of student grants.

On occasion, some post-graduates and post-doctorates get more than enough grants while others get none. The problem, according to Mooney, stems not from a lack of funds but rather from bureaucratic oversight.

“The central administration has the money and it is sent off to the various faculties, but sometimes it does not make its way to the right people, and we’re talking to the administration to figure out a way to do that,” he said in his address.

PGSS also plans to make post-graduate student rights regarding their supervisors more clear. A recent PGSS survey that asked students to assess their supervisors came up with mixed results.

PGSS, Mooney says, will aim to “increase awareness, protect, and advertise student’s rights regarding their supervisors.”

Internal business

Four motions were discussed and voted on during Council.

The first was a motion to impose a non-opt-outable fee of $0.75 on PGSS members once per semester to financially support the operations of the McGill Tribune, making PGSS members part of the Tribune Publications Society. This motion passed.

A similar question was put to referendum in late April of this year, but it lost by a close vote. According to Mooney, the Tribune started covering Council and graduate student issues about a year ago, and is interested in expanding its coverage. When the proposed $1.00 per semester fee lost in referendum in April however, Mooney said that the upcoming referendum will be lesser in scope.

“We agreed that we’ll ask the question again, but we’ll ask for a smaller fee,” he told The Daily.

Another motion aimed to institute a McGill Writing Centre fee of $1.80 per term, to avoid the cessation of “all one-on-one tutorial services for graduate students” provided by the centre.

The motion passed, but the follow-up motion, which aimed to amend the PGSS budget for a one-time transfer of $3,000 from the Special Projects Fund to the McGill Writing Centre for tutor wages, did not.

“Some people said, ‘even though it’s an important service […] we don’t feel comfortable allocating money from the budget,”’ Mooney later told The Daily.

The fourth motion aimed to create a policy regarding Mandatory Institutional Fees (FIOs). PGSS currently risks seeing new FIOs created by McGill’s Fee Advisory Committee without an official PGSS referendum, the standardized process utilized for fee increases in other student bodies at McGill. A policy for structuring a referendum process in the event of any fee changes or increases was voted on, and the motion passed.

A visit from the principal

The highlight of the meeting was McGill Principal Suzanne Fortier’s surprise visit, when she took the floor for a short speech and questions from students afterwards.

On several occasions, she emphasised the need for herself, the administration, and the professors to be “connected to the student body.”

“Open communication and honesty” between the two bodies, she said, is vital in order to improve students’ university experience.

Her speech also emphasized the need to maintain and better McGill’s status as a world-class university despite financial troubles. To do this, Fortier emphasized, the priority investment must be in people – attracting top-level graduate students and professors – rather than in material.

Fortier’s visit, Mooney said, was largely successful. “[It’s] clear that this was a great forum for her to hear about what issues are happening at the local level,” he said.

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McGill’s Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) held its first general meeting of the academic year on September 19, during which members passed motions regarding Quebec’s Charter of Values, bylaw changes, and international student health insurance.

Quebec Charter of Values

Following the lead of McGill professors and of Principal Suzanne Fortier, PGSS addressed the Parti Québécois’s proposed Charter of Values.

The motion presented in the GM read, “Be it resolved that the PGSS oppose the Quebec government proposal to limit the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols by state personnel.”

Two amendments to the motion were brought forward by Art History and Communications Studies Graduate Students Association (AHCS-GSA) representative Gretchen King. The first amendment was a resolution for PGSS to send a letter to Premier Pauline Marois expressing the Society’s opposition to the Charter. The second amendment was a resolution to notify post-graduate students in the event of any mobilizations against the Charter.

Both of the amendments were adopted, and the motion passed with strong support.

However, a third amendment proposed by King – for PGSS to mobilize post-graduate students in the event of demonstrations against the Charter – was rejected. As one attendee put it, “PGSS is a student society, not a trade union.”

Bylaw changes

Out of the 11 proposed bylaw changes in the first motion presented to the GM, two stood out as contentious.

The first bylaw change proposed to amend the composition of the appointments board – notably, the motion proposed that two members of the PGSS Executive would sit on the board.

This proposal was challenged notably by Economics Graduate Student Association (EGSA) representative Guillaume Lord, who argued that having two executive members on the board would reduce its useful role as a check and balance on executive power.

The bylaw change passed, however, after PGSS Secretary-General Jonathan Mooney explained that the proposed change was merely a matter of resolving contradictions between PGSS’s constitution and the Society bylaws.

The second proposed bylaw amendment aimed to modify Council seat apportionment. The amendment would reduce the size of Council, which currently stands at 131 seats.

Some students argued that a large council is more representative and should be kept as is, while others branded the size unwieldy, pointing out that PGSS’s council is far larger than SSMU’s council, which has 45 seats.

One student pointed out that if all 131 members were to attend the council meetings, they would not be able to fit into their designated room, and that the PGSS council dwarfs even the US Senate – which has 100 members.

The proposal was passed, and Council size will be reduced.

Health insurance

In a follow-up to this summer’s discussions with student union Fédération étudiante universitaire de Québec (FEUQ) regarding the affordability of international student health care, a motion was passed that advocated “expanding Quebec Medicare coverage to international students.”

According to the motion, although international students are treated as Canadians for tax purposes when working, a Quebec government directive forces hospitals to charge international students three times the Quebec Medicare rate. This has led to a skyrocketing of health insurance premiums, which PGSS denounced as “an obstacle to educational achievement.”

An earlier version of this article stated that passing a motion does not mean any action will be taken, but instead that the PGSS Council will vote on it at a later date. In fact, motions that pass at the General Meeting do not need to be voted on at PGSS Council for any action to be taken. In addition, The Daily stated that Guillaume Lord was a representative of the English Graduate Student Association. Lord is in fact a representative of the Economics Graduate Student Representation. 

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Around 100 environment-conscious cyclists rode around the streets of Montreal as part of the ‘Ice Ride,’ a Critical Mass-style collective bike ride organized by Greenpeace Montreal.

The protest remained a good-natured and humourous affair, and was described by Anne-Sarah, a student who dressed as Santa Claus for the occasion, as “festive and inclusive.” Cyclists stopped at gas stations, where protesters disguised as polar bears posed with gas pumps. The ride ended at Sir-Wilfrid-Laurier Park, where the protesters convened for a potluck.

The event was part of Greenpeace’s year-old Save the Arctic campaign, which aims to fight against oil companies’ plan to use the melting of Arctic sea ice to drill for more oil. Greenpeace declared September 15 as an international day of action when activists across six continents got on their bikes and cycled in defense of the Arctic.

In a speech addressing the rally, Save the Arctic campaign leader Patrick Bonin explained that this protest was timed to coincide with the annual moment in late summer when the ice sheet retreats to its smallest size. Bonin also described the Arctic situation as having reached a “tipping point” due to climate change.

The protest marks a year since the record-breaking low of September 2012. According to the Greenpeace press release, “The 2012 sea ice extent value was a record 48.5% below the long term average recorded between 1979 and 2000. Data shows that the rate of melting has increased significantly in recent years.”

These facts, which have sparked concerns that the Arctic is deteriorating faster than previously thought, do not seem to deter the oil industry. On the contrary, some companies see the retreating ice caps as an opportunity to drill below the sea for Arctic oil reserves.

Shell is foremost among those firms, and received particular attention during Sunday’s protest. The rally stopped off at two Shell gas stations, posed for photos, and delivered what Bonin described as a “special message”: polar bear roars.

The Canadian government was also targeted by the ecologists. In his speech to the rally before the ride, Bonin said that the Harper government “has not been fighting against climate change, but instead has been facilitating it by encouraging big oil companies to drill there.”

Greenpeace Montreal’s media and public relations officer Diego Creimer held a similar opinions as Borin.

“We have a Minister of Natural resources that last year went to Europe saying that tar sands can be green and that we can produce green oil. Yet tar sands are the number one polluter in Canada and its biggest contributor to climate change,” he told The Daily.

“This is a government that pulled out of Kyoto. This government is not listening to science, it is listening to a business plan,” he added.

When asked what in particular he hoped Ice Ride would achieve, Creimer, aware that the struggle in the Arctic could take “several years or even decades,” said that the Montreal protest was just one part of a world-wide struggle.

“This Ice Ride is just one more element of a longer struggle to create political pressure and momentum to bring on board more countries to support our actions,” said Creimer.

Rather than leading a grassroots protest, Greenpeace’s strategy is to make their voice heard at the highest levels of government. “It is through international conventions and a system of compromises on reducing CO2 that you will stop climate change,” said Creimer.

To that end, Greenpeace attempts to target politicians’ sensitivity to popular demand. “The way we do this is by having pictures taken [of Ice Ride protests] from all around the world, and these will be put in a photo album and shown to UN representatives,” continued Creimer.

This approach is in line with Greenpeace’s recent successes in the Save the Arctic campaign. Their petition has collected four million signatures, as well as “100,000 people sending letters and making phone calls to Prime Minister Harper to tell him ‘No Arctic drilling,’” according to their press release.

When asked what he thought of McGill’s holdings in several major oil companies, Creimer said that universities have a key role to play in shaping the future progress of society and, being at the forefront of the thinking process of developed countries, should carefully evaluate what they define as progress.

“Our progress in developed countries means also the tragedies for people in other areas of the world. Oil progress generates profit and some level of wealth in first world countries, but is sinking under the water some small countries and some islands in the Pacific,” said Creimer.

“So we should ask universities in rich countries, and I think it is our intellectual obligation to give a fair answer, to what progress is. If we are creating engineers and researchers, [… then universities] should concentrate their efforts, after asking that question, on improving the lives of people all around the world and not just a few.”

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Beta Omega, describing itself on Facebook as targeting “gay, bisexual, and progressive men,” held a booth on August 17 during Community Day and marched in the parade on August 18. Although individual brothers have participated in the parade before, this was the first time the chapter made an official appearance as representatives of the larger brotherhood.

The official participation is a sign of the chapter’s coming-of-age. The fraternity, Delta Lambda Phi, was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1986, but McGill’s chapter was only founded in 2009, starting as an interest group by Sam Reisler, then a U1 Arts student. The first Canadian chapter, it only received an official designation to step up from “colony” to “chapter” status in February 2012.

The original class consisted of a group of ten young men, “all frustrated by some of the attitudes of the existing Queer Organizations,” Beta Omega’s Vice President Brendan Edge told The Daily.

Although the chapter was praised by media across the country and on campus, there was some controversy at the time over the wording of Beta Omega’s stipulation that the fraternity was open to “males and those who identify as males.”

Queer McGill argued the language could be potentially offensive to trans* individuals who identified as males, but the fraternity’s then-president Michael D’Alimonte was at the time open to reworking the language and building a stronger relationship with Queer McGill.

It is still early days for the brothers, and therefore Beta Omega’s landmark participation in Fierté Montréal could act as a stepping-stone to an even swifter rise in prominence. Echoing one of the chapter’s mottos, “to make our presence known,” Edge said, “One of our goals this year is to get more involved in the Montreal Queer Community, while maintaining a strong presence on campus.”

Edge said that he and the chapter are working towards hosting DLPi’s Spring or Fall 2014 Eastern Regional Conference, “which all of the chapters in the Eastern part of the United States attend.”

Beta Omega now counts 15 active brothers, “from diverse backgrounds all across…the globe,” said Edge, adding that the diversity also extends to the brothers’ studies and hobbies.

What binds this diverse mix of men together is the fraternity. “We are brothers after all and like any family we try to stick together,” said Edge.

Beta Omega founder Reisler also praised the special connection the brotherhood provided. “Without a doubt, DLP was one of the most formative experiences of my time at McGill. Even though I’ve graduated, I carry the memories and bonds of friendship with me everyday.”

The purpose of DLP, as stated on their website and repeated on Beta Omega’s Facebook page, is “to develop dignified and purposeful, social, service, and recreational activities, for progressive men irrespective of sexual orientation, to lead in determining the rights and privileges of individuals in society, to present a strong and positive image, which respects the diversity of all individuals irrespective of sexual orientation.”

When asked how these guiding principles translate into reality for Beta Omega, Edge replied, “Through the social, service, and recreational activities that we do, we’re able to further our respect for our brothers’ diversity.”

Beta Omega regularly holds fundraisers, service projects, and social events at McGill and around the city. According to the press release, the chapter “raised funds to support a no kill animal shelter and an AIDS organization.”

Beta Omega’s most burning ambition, however, is less tangible: they are eager to attract more straight members. Believing that some progressive men might be put off by the idea of joining a queer brotherhood, the brothers are keen to dispel the false notion that the chapter is, in Edge’s words, a “hookup frat.”

“We need more guys who are progressive enough to join our brotherhood,” Edge explained, “because until that happens we are still very far away from equality”.

An earlier version of this article stated that Delta Lambda Phi was founded at Washington University in 1987. In fact, Delta Lambda Phi was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1986. The Daily regrets the error. 

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The first motion aims to restructure the distribution of international students’ supplementary tuition fees. At the moment, $13,000 – a portion of the fees paid – is forwarded to the government, which then redistributes the money indiscriminately throughout the province’s university system.

In order to help overcome this system – disadvantageous to the international students who often pay more but receive no extra benefits – the FEUQ resolved to adopt a policy to direct a portion of international students’ tuition fees directly to the universities that these students attend, where it would fund support programs for these students.

Jonathan Mooney, Secretary-General of PGSS, said in the congress’s press release that the society is “delighted that the FEUQ will be advocating for the improvement of funding to essential services for international students and ensure these students get more value from the fees they pay.”

The second proposal, made in collaboration with the Association des Étudiants de Polytechnique, aims to reduce the cost of international student health care. Students from overseas are legally obliged to purchase private insurance. Premiums have skyrocketed after a recent government directive led hospitals to charge international students three times the standard Quebec health insurance system (RAMQ) rate.

The student federation has now resolved to officially develop a campaign to increase the affordability of their health insurance. According to PGSS External Affairs Officer Navid Khosravi-Hashemi in an email to the Daily, “The FEUQ will now launch a major campaign to pressure the government to stop triple-charging foreign students for essential medical services.”

FEUQ President Antoine Genest-Grégoire added in an email to The Daily, that the federation will “advocate in favour of the free choice of the international students,” so that they can adapt their needs to one adequate plan rather than several plans that may overlap in their coverage.

It remains to be seen, however, if these resolutions will be translated into practical action. The present plan of action regarding health care is still in its very early stages, and both proposals have yet to be approved by the Quebec government.

Genest-Grégoire noted that any change will not be “overnight,” as the federation has to lobby three ministers on the provincial and federal levels. Yet Khosravi-Hashemi remains optimistic.

“The FEUQ has been very successful in the past in influencing government policy, including the adoption of a policy allowing international students to work off-campus under certain circumstances,” he said.

He added that the likelihood of an imminent Quebec election, with its greater opportunities for political dialogue, will also play in their favour.

There is also a risk that recent government budget cuts could impede the implementation of these proposals. Khosravi-Hashemi agreed that austere financial conditions “exacerbate the vulnerable conditions faced by international students by compressing the budget used at McGill.”

Genest-Grégoire added that while they affect the entire province, budget cuts are applied locally. It is up to each university to decide how best to allocate their budget, and they retain that initiative in time of cuts.

Taking the example of Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, where the FEUQ is fighting the administration’s decision to withdraw mental health services to students, Genest-Grégoire affirmed that, should a similar situation happen at McGill, “the FEUQ would be there to help students win.”

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