On February 28, the US and Israel launched a join airstrike attack on Iran, killing many high-ranking government officials including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran quickly retaliated in a series of missile and drone strikes against Israel and US allies in the region. The war has since turned into a chaotic global conflict; political leaders stand divided, the energy market has stalled, the Gulf states suffer damage from the unprecedented attack, and Trump speaks exclusively in contradictory terms about his next move.

Meanwhile, the Iranian government maintains a near- total internet blackout throughout the country, which renders it difficult to determine how the war is affecting Iranians on the inside of the conflict. The Daily was able to get in contact with a factory manager in Iran, to recount his experiences and share his thoughts from the first week of the conflict.

“[On the morning of Monday March 2], a very, very loud sound – caused by a bomb or missile – jolted me out of bed, waking me up,” he writes. “I froze, and did not immediately go to check on the factory until about 15 minutes later. In the factory, about 80 per cent of the windows facing the explosion were broken…The factory yard was full of bomb or missile fragments, full of large metal pieces, full of various parts including vision cameras, full of crushed rubble…broken glass covered my desk.”

“I think if [the explosion] had happened during working hours, we would have had at least 10-20 people injured…the distance between the explosion and our factory was about 100 meters.”

In the following week, Saeed cancelled work for his employees, although he went to the factory every day.

“Every day and night – at 10 p.m. or 3 a.m. or 8 a.m. etc., generally at different times – I heard a sound like an airplane or a missile. With my previous knowledge, I tried to take shelter quickly, so that if something happened, I wouldn’t get hurt. It sounded about two to four times every day.”

Once work resumed for Saeed’s employees, the sentiment amid the factory was one of unrest and paranoia. “There was worry in their eyes. A few of them had turned their feelings of worry into anger or chaos. Inadvertently, their words disturbed their coworkers and caused them to grow anxious as well. Seeing the state of the situation, I decided to call off work until further notice and send everyone home.”

“Some people decided to stay, to help clean up the rubble…at 9 a.m. we started replacing the broken windows. At noon, there was another explosion and the windows broke again.”

Such destruction and paranoia is characteristic of war. As the conflict drags on, Iranians – both within the country and in the diaspora – become increasingly disillusioned with the foreign powers who came to their “aid.” Hope dwindles for regime change and improved conditions once the war is over.

On the other hand, the majority of Iranians express discontent with the current regime, and have grown desperate for an alternative. “The ordinary people have lived without any peace or prosperity for 47 years. They are tired; they are unhappy,” Saeed tells us. “But they have found that whenever they protest, they face severe crackdowns and bloodshed, while the government remains untouched. I think more than 85 per cent of the people are against the government.”

Time and time again, mass protests against the regime have been met with violent retaliation. The most recent wave of protests in January and February of this year have been recorded as the deadliest wave of crackdowns in Iran’s modern history, with many estimates of fatalities exceeding 30,000.

This is why the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28 had such a profound effect on Iranians: after decades of protests that rendered thousands dead while harbouring no real change, hope is in scarce supply. The sudden death of the regime’s most important figurehead gives a despairing population a tangible source of hope to latch on to. The overwhelming sentiment seemed to be that Khamenei’s death had freed the people of Iran, and put a definitive end to their suffering.

However, liberation did not immediately follow Khamenei’s death. In fact, what Iran saw instead of democracy was its antithesis: Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was appointed by Iran’s Assembly of Experts as his replacement; and the Islamic regime, although weakened, remains in power.

Weakened in terms of state apparatus, but not in spirit; since the beginning of “Operation Epic Fury,” the Iranian government has doubled down on its repressive measures and intimidation tactics. On state television, one presenter threatened that “every single” dissident will be pursued, and they will “make [their] mothers mourn.” The chief of police claimed that anyone who takes to the streets against the regime “[will not be seen] as a protester or something else; we will see them as the enemy and do with them what we do with the enemy.” Some Iranians profess that, in spite of the current airstrikes, they are still more afraid of their own government than outside forces.

Their fear is not unfounded; the Islamic regime has routinely imprisoned, tortured, and killed those who it deems a threat to its hegemony. Systemic violence is intrinsic to the government’s state apparatus.

It is true that the US-Israeli attack is an illegal one, and the continual erosion of international law is deeply concerning. It is also true that American intervention in the Middle East, such as the “war on terror” in Afghanistan and the 2003 Iraqi invasion, has an egregious track record. The US’ meddling has often resulted in lengthy, drawn-out conflicts that destabilize governments and devastate local populations. However, the present alternative for Iran – complete withdrawal of US and Israeli forces from the region, leaving the people’s fate in the hands of the Islamic regime – isn’t awfully alluring either. It is likely that as soon as foreign attacks cease to be a threat, the Iranian government will carry out mass imprisonments and executions of its internal “enemies.”

One option touted enthusiastically by the diaspora is the return of the exiled crowned prince, Reza Pahlavi. Although Pahlavi has a sizeable support base in the Iranian diaspora, and perhaps has some backing in Iran, his competency for the role is questionable. Saeed has his reservations regarding the exiled prince: “A person who has only talked and lived in luxury for 47 years wouldn’t be willing to come to Iran even if they give him the country with both hands. In my opinion, the percentage of people’s desire for Reza Pahlavi…is not even between 5 and 15 per cent.”

In Saeed’s view, Reza Pahlavi is a troublesome candidate; “Having a father as the Shah is not proof of sensibility and wisdom. If your father was wise and sensible, the events of 1979 would not have taken place. [The Shah] also had in his mind a great delusion, and wanted not only Iran, but the entire world under his feet; a delusional dream of power and global domination. Like Mohammad Reza Shah, [Reza Pahlavi] is our Trump who wants to rule the world.”

When the most viable “democratic” alternative Iran sees for itself is a relic of an archaic autocratic dynasty, it is clear that Iran is not dealt a fair hand when it comes to democracy. Grievances and suffering have compounded over decades of living under oppressive rule, resulting in progressively lower expectations and standards for change. Even when people continue fighting for a “democratic” alternative, what they come to accept as “democracy” becomes more lenient.

What results is a nation in which war sparks celebration, and the most viable form of democracy is the return of monarchy. After 47 years of violence and bloodshed, war is peace and freedom is slavery.

The post Iran is Not Dealt a Fair Hand When it Comes to Democracy appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Every year, March 8 serves as a benchmark to gauge the causes that women are fighting for, a moment to reflect on the progress of last year’s concerns, and on the wave of new ones that have since emerged. This year, indignation towards legislative amendments in the province dominated demonstrations in Montreal and Quebec City, with thousands of participants protesting recent changes including threats to religious freedoms, reductions in women’s access to healthcare services, and narrow immigration policies.

A notable point of contention is the government’s ongoing pursuit of secularism. While in 2019, Bill 21 initially banned public service workers, like teachers, from wearing religious symbols in the workplace, last October, Bill 94 went a step further, prohibiting school staff, volunteers, and students from doing the same. According to CBC, the Quebec government intends to “defend equality between men and women,” though the bill can often carry out the opposite effect. Dolores Chew, a member of Women of Diverse Origins, the group who organized the march, explained that “women who wear hijabs are going to lose employment, making them economically dependent.” Thus, instead of reversing the effect of patriarchal power dynamics, measures like these reinforce them. The consequences of Bill 94, which encourages women to choose between faith and involvement in civil society, are already evident. In January, the Riverside Elementary School in Montreal banned Sabaah Khan, a mother who had volunteered at the library for 8 years, for wearing a hijab due to its compliance with Bill 94. Furthermore, the new secular proposal of Bill 9 expands the current restrictions on religious attire to subsidized daycares and private schools, in addition to banning prayer spaces and religious foods in public institutions.

Another central issue among protesters is women’s access to healthcare. Funding and staff shortages have led to the temporary closure of obstetrics clinics across the province. In the last few months, several women have had to travel hours to give birth due to a lack of professionals or clinics near them, particularly in the Gaspésie region in eastern Quebec. As reported by CBC, a member of the Parti Quebecois and a health critic, Joël Arseneau, denounced the government’s idleness, which treats women in the Gaspé like “second class citizens.” Those without access to public health insurance face even more obstacles, since the community groups that are meant to help them also face severe funding drawbacks from the provincial government. Moreover, intimate partner violence reports in Quebec tripled from 2015 to 2024. The rise in reports throughout the decade might not only reflect the quantity of cases, but also an increase in women reporting violence to the police. In the first three weeks of 2026, at least four men killed women in a context of intimate partner violence in Quebec. Additionally, women’s shelters are in demand now more than ever, with the housing crisis and limited access to the appropriate resources women need to leave dangerous situations.

Furthermore, the stricter immigration policies in the last few years have created an especially precarious environment for female immigrants. Filipino protester Deann Nardo, from Migrante Quebec, claims women of colour who immigrate to Quebec are more vulnerable to “exploitation and abuse,” both at home and in the workplace. These women are more than 20 per cent more likely than men to arrive in Canada with spousal status. They are put in precarious situations where the right of many immigrant women to remain in the country depends on their partner’s employment. This systemic economic dependence binds them to their partners resulting in not only a lack of self- sufficiency, but also a difficulty in leaving a patriarchal household. While open work permits were a gateway into finding employment, now, with greater restrictions on the eligibility of spouses and dependents, financial autonomy for immigrant women seems even further away.

The provincial instability mirrors a broader concern. On a global scale, the ascension of the far-right threatens the security of women’s rights. “There’s a rise in anti- feminist discourse,” says Anne- Valérie Lemieux-Breton, the coordinator of the social services group Regroupement des Groupes de Femmes de la Capitale- Nationale. Québec Solidaire (QS) leader Ruba Ghazal highlights how hateful comments online targeting female public figures discourage many women from continuing to share their views online. She partly attributes targeted online harassment to “a rise in misogynistic and masculinist discourse, even in schools.” Montreal-based author, India Desjardins, shared a recent comment in which she was targeted on one of her posts: “You’re a crazy bitch. Go get help.” Ghazal defends the importance of not trivializing such violence, as well as the need for a service that addresses the issue and helps victims feel safer. The QS leader claims “There is a lot of work to be done to educate and raise awareness among the population.”

International Women’s Month is here not just as an opportunity to celebrate all that women have conquered over centuries of oppression. It’s a reminder that systemic barriers against equality perpetually rig the game, and that women of colour constantly find themselves in a lose-lose. In this political climate, women like protester, Mathilde Leduc, are fearful that “the rights that we had will disappear over time.” Though standing tall March after March is a tiresome battle, we’re still standing, as resistance is imperative so that no woman is left behind.

The post Second-Class Citizens appeared first on The McGill Daily.

One moment, an influencer is showing their skincare routine on TikTok.

The next, you are watching footage of bombings in Gaza.

This is the strange paradoxical rhythm of social media. Images of war, famine, and political violence appear alongside memes, fashion content, and pop culture gossip. Tragedy and entertainment converge into the same continuous stream of content.

For many people, especially students who receive most of their news through platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or X, the juxtaposition of global tragedy and everyday entertainment creates a kind of emotional whiplash. We move instantly from witnessing human suffering to something else entirely, without the time to process what we have just seen. In previous generations, exposure to global tragedy was slower and more mediated. Encountering global tragedy often requires dedicated time and attention—whether through reading a full article or watching a news segment — because understanding and emotionally processing such events cannot happen instantaneously. Social media breaks this experience into fragments: war footage appears between vacation photos and makeup tutorials, exposing users to global suffering in brief moments, squeezed between other content competing for attention. The infinite scroll collapses the distance between the catastrophic and the mundane.

This constant exposure to suffering can be psychologically exhausting. Seeing repeated images of violence, starvation, or destruction, even from afar, can create feelings of anxiety, helplessness, or emotional fatigue. Some psychologists refer to this as secondary or vicarious trauma: the emotional toll of witnessing suffering indirectly through media.

However, social media introduces an additional layer to this experience. The problem is not only that we see these images but rather how we see them. Online feeds offer no pause, no transition, and no context. The emotional system is forced to switch rapidly between empathy, shock, amusement, and indifference.

Over time, this can create a dangerous form of desensitization. When atrocity appears constantly in the feed, it risks becoming just another form of content. The brain begins to protect itself by dulling its response. The images are still disturbing, but they begin to blur together. What once felt shocking starts to feel like the norm.

There is also an emotional tension many users experience: the discomfort of scrolling past suffering. A video shows a starving child, a destroyed city, or grieving families. We watch for a few seconds, perhaps feel a surge of sadness or anger, and then we move on. Then, another post appears. Another video. Another distraction. Features like infinite scroll and algorithmically curated feeds encourage us to continue scrolling, even when what we have seen deserves attention and reflection.

This dynamic raises an unsettling question: are we truly empathizing with suffering, or simply observing it?

Critic Susan Sontag once wrote in her book, Regarding the Pain of Others, about how images of war can transform violence into spectacle. When suffering is repeatedly photographed and circulated, it risks becoming something viewers observe rather than something they meaningfully engage with. Social media intensifies this problem. The platforms that deliver these images are designed to maximize engagement and attention, not reflection.

None of this means people should ignore global events or stop paying attention to injustice. The circulation of images from conflict zones has also played an important role in raising awareness and documenting human rights violations. Many of the world’s most urgent stories now reach global audiences precisely because ordinary people share them online.

Nonetheless, it is worth questioning how the structure of social media feeds and shapes our emotional relationship to these events. When tragedy appears alongside entertainment, when catastrophe becomes part of the same endless scroll as memes and lifestyle content, our sense of empathy becomes harder to sustain.

We are more informed than ever before. Yet at the same time, we are often overwhelmed, exhausted, and unsure how to respond.

The problem is not that we see the world’s suffering. The problem is that the platforms through which we see it rarely allow us the space to feel it.

The post The Emotional Whiplash of Infinite Scroll appeared first on The McGill Daily.

If you’ve ever taken a high school language class, you’ve maybe encountered a form of close reading dissecting the many devices used in literature. Does the author use formal or colloquial language? What motifs are used in the text? How do form and content work together?

You aren’t asked these questions because you’re expected to pursue a career in literature. You aren’t asked to do most assignments, like write an essay, for example, because you’re expected to make a breakthrough on problems exhaustively studied by experts. Writing helps develop your own analytical voice. Understanding how to methodically work through a question is a muscle that needs to be constantly trained.

Yet in light of the rising critiques of the bias, disproportionate representations, and scarce job prospects seen in traditional journalism, masses have, as a response, begun to rediscover this form of textual analysis to make sense of our current social and political sphere. Old and new writers have found a home on Substack, where they can freely express their opinions without the constraints of an editor at their back. Many of us, disillusioned with major news outlets, have discovered newsletters covering marginalized voices and underrepresented stories. So while the “oversaturation” of writing platforms like Substack or Medium has exposed smaller communities to a newer, wider audience, I like to think that the abundance of people wielding their intellectual freedom outside of a formal classroom has the potential to create accessible spaces where knowledge, curiosity, and creativity can openly thrive… So why doesn’t it?

The resurgence of blogging in the last few years has naturally led to a mass migration of social media users to essay-format platforms. This past year, Substack amassed over 2 million new paid subscribers and currently has a total of over 20 million subscribers. To sustain this upward trajectory, and perhaps prevent shortened attention spans from pivoting elsewhere after experiencing the writer’s high, Substack introduced new features to keep its newfound audience seated. The On Substack publication run by the platform’s management team credits the addition of notes (basically tweets) as one of the drivers of Substack’s significant growth. Instead of merely publishing articles, users can now also put out status updates on subjects ranging from midnight musings to quotes from other publications. Notes provide a simple way to share one’s thoughts on any subject matter and receive engagement without the added task of research, drafting, or editing. Following their introduction, these short, sharp, and often morally superior attacks on current culture have begun to dominate the app’s discovery pages. Occasionally, these notes will be extracted from a longer essay expanding on the same point. Often, this longer essay will just be one out of the thousands on the app that advances the same general takeaway, which leads me to my second problem.

I am by no means a stickler when it comes to what people write about on their page. I also would not expect every newsletter I read to make transgressive breakthroughs, as I don’t have those expectations for myself. However, I do object to claims overstating the recent strides cultural commentary has made this past year in developing spaces for progressive discussion.

I won’t deny the fact that Substack has achieved some significant strides in reviving many people’s love of writing. Substack has additionally exposed me and so many others to great ideas while allowing writers to monetize their content and make a living doing what they love. But the excitement of reading articles on the app began to subside once I realized that I was reading the same conclusions reached in the same manner. Think essays on performative femininity, parasocial relationships with media figures, the correlation between trend cycles and consumerism, etc. None of these topics are inherently flawed, and I’m sure there are interesting points to be made about each. Yet when cultural commentary writers are pigeonholed into social media analysis and fail to apply any historical research into the topics covered, you begin to ask yourself, does this observation aim to reveal pitfalls in modern-day society, or are these just repeating trend cycles and masquerading it as commentary? I don’t believe the recent growth of users is exactly to blame for the redundancy I’ve seen on Substack. As previously mentioned, the newcomers led to more frequent updates undertaken by Substack’s team, such as trending pages, direct messages, and newsletter rankings to secure the app’s growing popularity. Substack became a viable competitor to other social platforms, but instead of upholding what made it so unique, Substack caved into the algorithmic and fast-paced rhythm seen on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. While they were intended to maintain the stamina of Substack’s growth, these developments simultaneously fostered an environment where quantity has triumphed over quality, and devoid, sweeping, almost superficial aphorisms have replaced curiosity. Substack, like most other social platforms, was ultimately plagued by the internet flu, or in other words, the online philosophers’ problem of the week, quickly exhausted once the same point was recycled over and over again.

Besides my basic frustrations over the repetitive content seen on the app, the trend cycles piercing platforms centering art, politics, and all other forms of analytical writing do reveal some worrisome consequences. In the act of reiterating what’s already been said on the news, online, and in our circles, we weaken the muscle of writing to the point of paralysis – a point where eventually, all we can critically consider with a careful eye is what’s familiar. We step into the process of writing an essay with a set conclusion, and consequently no curiosity. Capitalism or anti-intellectualism become the foundation of the piece, a base that we build our analysis atop of, rather than being the end conclusion reached after research and investigation. Consequently, when the focal point of such analysis presents itself, with its many faces in the real world, there is little independent written about the matter. Capitalism and its consequences are only examined when discussing low-quality clothing from SHEIN and the death of personal style, rather than the devaluation of local textile markets in African countries for cheaper Chinese goods (which are typically produced in horrific working conditions). Anti-intellectualism is reduced to American college students’ inability to finish a novel, and the global cuts to education and research are seldom considered. We distance ourselves from the topics we aren’t informed enough on to make an opinion on, and in the end, writing and the skills acquired through that process are no longer transferable.

When considering what I personally would like to see in independent journalistic writing, I often fall back on Toni Morrison’s advice to young writers. Morrison, who despite mostly receiving accolades for her writing, was also a skilled editor at Random House. She also often provided young writers with a plenitude of advice. In a 2013 interview with the New York Public Library she said, “You don’t know nothing. So do not write what you know. Think up something else.” Morrison explained how she would usually say this to the creative writing students she taught, and I know the kind of online newsletters that fancy themselves in cultural criticism don’t necessarily concern themselves with creative non- fiction. Still, I do think there is some benefit in going into a writing project with a basic idea in mind and a strong motivation to gain more knowledge because naturally, the more you learn about a subject the more your opinion will change. The cycle of “trending discourse” that has afflicted many bloggers today reveals a larger issue with the way opinion writing is treated today. When we run with the idea that one must develop a clear thesis and layout before undertaking the drafting process, an idea that has been drilled into the minds of young writers and academics for as long as anyone cares to remember, we kill the potential of so many possibly insightful projects. Deciding that our own limited, probably one dimensional, perspective is the most important perspective will drive us to solely seek information that supports our main argument, or engaging with those that challenge it in a superficial manner.

The post The Substack Essay appeared first on The McGill Daily.

For those immigrating to Canada, it might not just be the grass that’s greener on the other side of the border, but the conditional visas as well. Marriage-based immigration has existed in Canada since the early 20th century. That being said, it was only in 2001, through the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, that the Canadian government established a modern spousal sponsorship framework. Family sponsorship or reunification programs quickly became a gateway of opportunity for many to build a life across borders; however, these programs also reveal the consequences of intertwining private life with public power dynamics, serving as a microcosm of the blind confidence we place in the law and how procedural legitimacy is often placed at odds with lived realities.

The privilege to import marriages to Canadian soil is selectively granted legitimacy, by a legal system that legitimizes situations it already has precedent for. With Canada’s Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (IRCC) department’s announcement for “tighter immigration checks” and lower sponsorship quotas — declining from 70,000 in 2025 to a projected 61,000 for 2027, concerns about the system’s eagerness to approach spousal union feels more relevant now than ever. Though designed to prevent marriage fraud, the legal system’s exhaustive investigation procedure and rigid documentation policies can pose additional barriers for couples and immigrants who are already vulnerable upon entering a new country.

Public servants’ interference in the private sphere is exemplified when the Canada Border Service Agency (CBSA) cross examines Canadian immigrant households with scrutiny and suspicion, which exposes these households to societal norms of what is deemed an acceptable relationship. In one striking 2022 case, in Sudbury, Ontario, Ariella Ladouceur applied to sponsor her husband, Cordella James from Jamaica. Despite their three-year relationship and a child on the way, their application was rejected on concerns that Ladouceur’s husband might intend to commit marriage fraud. This remained a concern even after Ladouceur showed the immigration officers letters from her family physician and ultrasound photos of the baby. Though the couple has applied to appeal the decision, the process is said to take up to two years, leaving Ladouceur to give birth to her child without the father. The government attempts to measure the legitimacy of marriage and it is the lovers who bear the burden of providing proof. It is the government’s perception of legitimate marriage—the limits of what it is willing to acknowledge as a Canadian household that is justified by the rigorous documentation of a couple’s correspondences, travel records, family affidavits.

Conditional spousal immigration regulations embed inequality into the union of two equals. By introducing a power imbalance through legal asymmetry — a condition in which one partner holds immigration authority over the other — these regulatory forces create situations of dependency, where one partner’s legal status is contingent on the other’s sponsorship, a power that can be leveraged against them, opening up opportunities for exploitation and abuse.

In 2012, Canada had the Conditional Permanent Residency policy in place, which required couples to live together consecutively for two years after permanent residency was granted or risk losing legal status. This put victims of domestic abuse at risk, with many forced to choose between enduring two years of domestic violence or giving up the life they had begun to build in Canada. While the IRPR s. 72.1(6) outlined an exception in the case of abuse victims, accessing this exemption was widely regarded by legal advocates as procedurally burdensome and re-traumatic for victims, as the burden of proof for victims demanded comprehensive police reports and invasive medical examinations — leading to the policy’s repeal in 2017.

In a climate of fear and paranoia, the policy granted sponsors authority. It reinforced the view that citizenship was a privilege that the sponsor personally afforded to their spouse — one that could be revoked. When the sponsor’s authority is backed by the state, it is inevitable that a power imbalance results in the relationship. Manipulation could take the form of self- victimizing narratives about being promised a partnership and being “used” for a visa. Being unaware of one’s legal rights, the existence of the abuse exception, or availability of language learning resources could restrict newly arrived immigrants’ abilities to navigate the complex legal landscape and make them dependent on their sponsors. At the same time victims faced the emotionally taxing burden of supplying proof of abuse, which is made especially difficult if the abuser is uncooperative by withholding critical documentation and preparing to defend themselves against the possible reinvestigation into the legitimacy of their marriage. The power disparity is not a case of interpersonal relations, it is by design, a natural consequence of transposing law onto domestic life.

Examining the intersection of immigration and marriage reveals what kind of marriages the legal system legitimizes. Spousal reunification is at the mercy of the government. When we allow the state to assign legitimacy, the importance that we as a society place in the institution of marriage is revealed. It is because we validate marriage with legal recognition that these structures are given permission to grant, withhold and limit spousal partnership on the basis of borders. It is worth being skeptical of these government institutions that impose bureaucratic legal frameworks onto the very real lives of spouses and families across the world. It is not good faith, it is beyond bad faith; it is deeply un-Canadian.

The post The Ministry of Love appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Every February 14, people partake in the same frivolous routine: buy flowers; book the overpriced dinner; or, if they’re single, brace for the annual reminder that they are alone and quietly wonder if they have failed at adulthood. Though the contemporary holiday was initially designed to celebrate love, Valentine’s Day has become oversaturated with social expectations – how to celebrate “properly,” gift-giving, or even performative posts on social media – that often leave single people feeling left out.

The irony is that, worldwide, fewer people are in relationships compared to the previous century. Since 2010, the number of people living alone has risen in 26 out of 30 wealthy countries. In the United States, the share of 25 to 34-year-olds living without a partner has doubled over the past 50 years. More and more people across Asia are choosing not to marry, and each new European generation is less likely to be married or living with a partner than the last generation at the same age. The Economist is calling this phenomenon the “great relationship recession.” This label makes it sound as if romance is collapsing, when what’s actually collapsing is the centuries-old convention that successful adulthood, and especially womanhood, must entail romantic relationships.

For most of history, romantic relationships weren’t merely a norm. They were also an economic necessity, especially for women. Marriage was pitched as security, status, and social legitimacy, safeguarding a woman’s “place” in society. If unmarried, women were called “spinsters,” a word which carried a misogynistic aftertaste in its pronouncing of a woman’s failure in life. While we may have retired the term, we have not yet retired the logic. Even today, as Vogue writer Chanté Joseph puts it, there’s still “boyfriend land:” a world where women’s identities are centered around their partners’ lives in a way that’s rarely reversed.

However, Joseph also affirms that “being partnered doesn’t affirm your womanhood anymore.” Women have many other claims to success: degrees, jobs, confidence, creativity and knowledge, to name a few. In spite of the historical pressure to marry, rising chosen singlehood isn’t automatically a crisis. Rather, it can read as one of the most significant forms of female emancipation in the last half century.

For some, this shift is evidence of women’s admirable self-reliance and the reclaiming of their lives. As women’s career prospects have improved, their financial dependence on partners has decreased. Being able to support themselves means they’re less likely to tolerate “inadequate or abusive” relationships. In fact, The Economist suggests that a multitude of women have been liberated from unhappy unions and that men must now treat their partners better if they want to stay together. In that sense, the story isn’t about dying romance, but rather about gendered emancipation.

Additionally, heterosexual relationship terms are being renegotiated. As living alone becomes more viable, women’s standards become more exacting – partly because increasing divorce trends taught people to think carefully about what they want and who they want it with, as SFU researcher Yuthika Girme notes. A mediocre partner is no longer a better bet than remaining single. For instance, many women prioritize education and financial stability in a partner. Yet, at the same time, men have gradually dropped behind women academically. Men are therefore incentivized to meet “this moving bar,” pushing domestic labour and childcare toward a more equal split across genders. For many, growing female autonomy and loosening gender roles is a genuine win.

However, if being single is so freeing, why does it often feel so bleak? Surveys across countries suggest that 60 to 73 per cent of single people would rather be in a relationship than single. A 2019 U.S. poll found that “although 50 per cent of singles were not actively looking for a partner, only 27 per cent said this was because they enjoyed being single.” Essentially, there’s a rising number of people yearning for love but stuck in a dating market failure preventing compatible people from finding one another. Worse still, the timing of this failure is brutal as we are in the midst of a so-called “loneliness epidemic.” Researchers within Harvard School of Education found a strong correlation between loneliness and mental health: reports of anxiety or depression were far higher among lonely adults (81 per cent) than among those who were less lonely (29 per cent).

Yet, “single” is not a synonym for “lonely” – and treating it that way is part of the problem. Stigma- entrenched couple-centered thinking, i.e. the assumption that being coupled up is the default and ideal way to live, has declined. However, single people are stigmatized as being “in between” their real lives, expected to, by midlife, “come to terms with being single.” Family gatherings still come with the expected question: “Are you seeing anyone?” This might sound innocuous, but it actually implies partnership is the ultimate goal. It also undermines the fact that, across representative samples – even including those who very much wish they were coupled – single people are often happy with their relationship status Many thriving singles savour solitude as an opportunity for freedom, reflection, productivity, and personal growth. For them, the discomfort isn’t the status of singlehood itself. Rather, it’s these social interactions that manufacture the insecurity they then claims to pity that threatens the happiness of single people.

Ultimately, if people want a romantic connection but can’t find it, what’s going wrong? By 2013, meeting online became the most common way couples formed, restructuring the relationship “market.” For one thing, social media sells relationships as perfect fairytales, producing unrealistic expectations. For another, dating apps foster excessive pickiness. Take Bumble, many women using the app to rule out men under six feet tall, eliminating roughly 85 per cent of potential matches. Social media has also made political identity inseparable from compatibility. The gendered polarization pushing men and women further apart – with the former leaning conservative and the latter leaning more liberal – turns politics into a deal-breaker. Take the 2024 US presidential campaign: women favoured Kamala Harris while Donald Trump benefited from a 10-point advantage among men.

Then there is the social atrophy issue. Americans, young and old alike, now meet up in person less often than they used to. Though COVID-19 wasn’t the initial root of the issue, it certainly accelerated it. Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld estimates that the pandemic-related reduction in dating pushed the number of singles in the US 13.7 million higher in 2022 than it would have been had 2017 singlehood levels held steady.

Some argue this erosion of in- person social life is indicative of “social and moral decay,” particularly as artificial intelligence (AI) grows more sophisticated and increasing numbers of people turn to it for intimate relationships. Surprisingly, seven per cent of young singles say they would consider a robo-romance with an AI companion. After all, AI does not ask you to clean the bathroom or get a better job.

Still, the real scandal isn’t that some people would rather date a bot; it is that, in a couple- centered world, singlehood comes with economic and social penalties. Even as stigma decreases, there can be a price to independence, and it is called the “singles tax” – the extra cost of living that falls on people who can’t split rent, bills, or groceries with a partner. While unattached New Yorkers may save on the costs of an expensive Valentine’s Day date, they’re paying a much higher – the highest worldwide in fact – “singles” tax to live by themselves. Living alone in New York City costs $19,500 (USD) more per year than living with a partner, not to mention inflation. In Toronto, the singles tax was nearly $15,000 (CAD) in 2023 based on one-bedroom rents. On the other hand, married or common-law couples can receive a spousal credit, pool medical expenses and split pensions with their partners, if eligible. As Queen’s University professor Elaine Power warns, “poverty rates for people living alone are ‘significantly higher’ than the general population.”

Overall, where being single was once a cautionary tale, it is now slowly becoming a desirable and coveted status. While some believe this “great relationship recession” might reflect social decay and loneliness, being single also reflects liberation from outdated expectations built on misogynistic assumptions. Yet, given the entrenched societal and economic barriers linked to singlehood, its rise might just be a trend. Only time will tell.

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Sophocles’ Antigone is a play for our time. In the wake of civil war, Creon, the newly self-appointed King of Thebes, issues an edict forbidding anyone to bury Polynices, brother to Antigone and Ismene, who fought against Creon’s winning side. More loyal to the laws of the gods and the needs of nature than to this sacrilegious edict from a tyrannical ruler, Antigone buries Polynices anyway and faces the consequences: death by abandonment through solitary confinement, where she is, in Luce Irigaray’s words, “deprived of the air, the sun, and all the environment necessary for living.”

Against the contemporary backdrop of rising fascism and suppression of activism, Antigone embodies the resolve and courage demanded of us today. Her unjust punishment, too, exemplifies the sort of repression that unfortunately dissuades many from following in her footsteps. Antigone has been widely regarded not only as a paragon of civil disobedience in general but also, more specifically, as a role-model for climate activists. Montreal’s own offshoot of the international climate activist group Last Generation has dubbed itself “Le Collectif Antigone.” This is a play with an important message that could resonate with viewers, one that is increasingly important for us to hear.

The McGill Classics Play’s “daring new iteration” seems, on some level, to understand that this is a play for our time. The adaptation, directed by McGill student Madelyn Mackintosh and alum Caroline Little, based on a new translation by Adam Zanin, certainly seems to have Donald Trump in mind. Creon wants to make Thebes great again. He is troubled by and seeks to vanquish the enemy within. In the second act, as the people start to turn on him, a soldier cries “I didn’t vote for him!”

Adapting the play for Trump’s America could be interesting. In truth, I happen to think that such an interpretation would, failing truly extensive and off-putting revisions to the dialogue, be too flattering to Trump and his ilk. Say what you will about Creon, but at least he can string a sentence together. Melania, unlike Eurydice, does not appear to have any sympathy for dissidents and Haemon is far more human than any of the Trump sons. Thus, when the McGill Classics Play’s production did obviously allude to Trump, I had to laugh at how absurd it is to live in a time when the “leader of the free world” is even more despicable than this villain of ancient literature.

However, rather than committing to making such a comparison, this staging is instead set “amid the rising authoritarianism of the 1930s.” Although the art deco set design confuses the analogy, the delivery of Creon’s monologues (pre-recorded and piped in such that Creon himself just stands, mouth unmoving, in front of a microphone a few times an act) is clearly meant to recall the aesthetics of Hitler’s speeches.

This confusion of contemporary (and 1920s) America with the Third Reich is, I think, in some ways meant to be the point. The takeaway of this production seems to be that Trump = Creon = Hitler. And insofar as we, the members of the audience, are not Antigone, we are the everyday Germans whose complacency allowed for the horrors of the Holocaust – although, in light of Hannah Arendt’s influential view of the Holocaust as a manifestation of the banality of the evil, this message is somewhat undercut by the choice to put all but the play’s “good guys” in ghostly face paint. Insofar as we understand Trump’s America to be devolving into a simple reiteration of Nazi Germany, we are, too, the Americans who “didn’t vote” for Trump, but who are doing nothing to stop him.

This choice of takeaway irks me. It is certainly true that many, if not all of us are complicit in a great many horrors. But as Trump’s cronies murder modern- day Antigones in the street and people increasingly compare Trump to Hitler, there has been growing discourse about how inapt this particular comparison is. John Meyer has recently argued that if you’re searching for a European fascist on whom to model Trump, Francisco Franco is your man. More compellingly, many point out that America in fact has its own long history of fascism. The Nazis were themselves inspired by this history. W.E.B. Dubois implied as early as 1935, in his Black Reconstruction in America, that “the white supremacism of Jim Crow America” was fascist. Two years later, Langston Hughes stated that “we Negroes in America do not have to be told what fascism is in action. We know. Its theories of Nordic supremacy and economic suppression have long been realities to us.” We might then worry that the compulsion to compare Trump to European dictators flows out of an unwillingness to look America’s own history in the face. Trump isn’t Hitler and he’s not Franco – his fascism is homegrown. In trying to say so much, this production thus fails to say anything especially compelling, flattening all particularity.

All of this said, this production had some real potential. Aniela Stanek’s portrayal of Antigone is excellent. The sister dynamic between her and Neela Perceval- Maxwell’s Ismene is very compelling, as is the choice to make Ismene as sympathetic as this version does. Nikhil Girard’s Creon, unmoving soliloquies in front of the mic aside, is solid. Nicholas Cho manages to make Eurydice surprisingly sympathetic even despite the character’s “moral blindness and outright complicity” with Creon. Megan Siow’s handmaiden and Sarah Shoff’s Tiresias are both important grounding voices.

Aside from the bloody and fiery spectacle that follows the death of the titular character, Griphon Hobby-Ivanovici’s Haemon, the most central and impassioned voice of reason, is the highlight of the second act for me. We can’t all be Antigones and we shouldn’t all be Ismenes. But many of us can, I think, aspire to be Haemons: loving and fiercely supportive of the few who, like Antigone, have an almost inhuman ability to stay committed to their principles against all odds. Loving them not in spite of this commitment, as with Ismene, but because of it.

Brendan Lindsay’s sentry is funny and charming – the comedic highlight of the show by a mile. Although making Sam Snyders’s magical bartender Hades himself leans a little too Percy Jackson and the Olympians-coded for my liking, especially in a production that already has so many moving pieces, his winkingly irreverent delivery is a welcome source of levity. Luca McAndrews’s advisor really shines in his fearful reactions to Creon’s increasing rage in the second act.

If I have more to say about the acting in the latter half, that’s largely because I was only able to see the actors’ faces after I moved into a seat that had been vacated during the intermission. While the original play is in part a call for tradition and ritual to be respected, this production for some reason – perhaps to leverage the art deco interior design of le 9e – foresook the tradition of the stage itself, thereby making it impossible for most of the audience to see anything. That this choice, and so many other confused adaptational choices, was made is a real shame, especially given that the cast, for all I could see, seem to have given such strong performances.

If this review is perhaps a little polemic, that is in part because this adaptation had such promise and because the choice to stage Antigone today is such a good one. But I love Antigone precisely because of its particularity. In G.W.F. Hegel’s influential analysis of the play, in fact, Antigone’s deepest crime is arguably that she preserves her brother in his particularity instead of allowing him to become just another anonymous corpse. It therefore saddened me to see this adaptation strip the play of what I take to be one of its greatest strengths. That Antigone is timeless does not mean that adaptations of it should pull aimlessly from so many historical contexts. In doing so, this adaptation loses much of the complexity that is so important for developing a robust understanding of the play, of the history of fascism, and of the workings of contemporary fascism.

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The United States has long relied on its democratic primacy as the source of its international legitimacy. In the Second World War, it was the US commitment to a moral- democratic framing of foreign policy and its vehement opposition to fascism and autocracy that laid the groundwork for its future claims to liberal supremacy and its role as an international moral police. The Cold War additionally led to an increasingly bipolar balance that placed America at the helm of democratic ideals. While the US has consistently ranked lower on democracy indices than states like Australia, Canada, and the Nordic countries, its place of economic and cultural prominence made it the democratic archetype in the global political imagination.

The repression of civil society is one of the hallmarks of democratic backsliding. As national leaders seek to expand their domestic authority, they must first squash opposing movements, creating fertile ground for expansions in executive power and removing threats to their authority. Trump’s recent responses to anti-ICE protests in both Los Angeles and Minnesota reflect this brand of targeted repression. In June 2025, Trump deployed both National Guard and Marine Corps troops to Los Angeles and the surrounding area to combat the supposed “lawlessness” and “violence” demonstrated in protests. Similarly, the ongoing ICE involvement in Minnesota targeting undocumented US immigrants, involves swathes of heavily armed and masked federal officials who use crowd suppression techniques (like tear gas and pepper spray) and frequent arrests in their campaign. ICE’s presence in Minnesota has also resulted in the deaths of two American citizens this January: Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. The timelines and public documentation of both killings call the administration’s claims of self- defense on behalf of ICE into question, failing to demonstrate a substantive threat to the lives of the agents. This use of an overwhelming militarized force to suppress protesters is typical of nations experiencing democratic backsliding and executive aggrandizement, the expansion of executive authority through a weakening of checks and balances. In Türkiye, a key example of democratic backsliding, the 2013 protests over the destruction of Gezi Park in Istanbul resulted in the brutal state repression of protesters where armed forces beat and tear gassed civil society, while also burning the tents of peaceful environmental protesters. This incident spurred even more protests throughout the nation’s 81 provinces, which only led to the continued state-sanctioned suppression. Examples of this in the United States and Türkiye bear eerie similarities. These instances involve an armed and violent militant response to a group of relatively peaceful protesters. Both anti-ICE and Gezi Park protests involved mass arrests, the deployment of riot police, and the use of tear gas. Despite these restrictions, both Türkiye and the US also have constitutional protections for civilian protest and assembly. Thus, the restrictions on protests in the two nations not only reflect a suppression of the popular will but a divergence from constitutional principles, another marker of democratic backsliding. While it can be assumed that executive authorities in both the United States and Türkiye would dispute the peaceful nature of the protests, human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and newspapers such as the New York Times assert the peaceful nature of each respective protest and the often-preemptive violent response by heavily armed authorities.

The infringement on constitutional and legal frameworks is another key step bringing a state down the road to democratic backsliding. As the judicial and legislative measures meant to protect citizens are undermined, the practice of democracy will also naturally fade. In El Salvador, a key ally of the US in the fight against immigration, the presidency of Nayib Bukele has been marred with concerns of increasing autocracy, including the suspension of habeas corpus within the Central American nation. In 2022, Bukele enacted a “state of exception” to combat gang violence in El Salvador. The campaign involved arbitrary detentions and due process violations, as well as torture allegations. Notably, Bukele allowed Salvadoran forces to enter and search properties without judicial warrants. This removal of democratic legal procedures is a key check on power as it allows for third-party review of coercive state behavior. The removal of checks and balances is a crucial characteristic of executive aggrandizement and is also central to autocratic regimes like Putinist Russia or theocratic Iran. A recent ICE memo, leaked from an anonymous Congress official, reveals a similar federal directive for agents in Minnesota. The memo authorizes ICE agents to search homes with an administrative warrant. These warrants do not have judicial approval and have a lesser probable cause requirement. While the distinction between a judicial and an administrative warrant may seem semantical, it is directly contrary to the US Constitution, America’s founding document, which protects against “unlawful search and seizure” and expressly requires, “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” Thus, similarly to the suspension of civil liberties and judicial review in Bukele’s El Salvador, ICE’s new warrant policy is directly contrary to the core legal framework of the United States, again demeaning its democratic merit.

Narrative suppression and control are another key mechanism exhibited by leaders of unstable and backsliding democracies. This practice involves the state suppression of media that reports views that oppose the state as well as the proliferation of manipulative information through state- controlled journalism, films, and rhetoric. Hungary, a nation that, according to the V-Dem democracy index, has experienced severe backsliding since 2010, provides a pertinent example of narrative suppression. In January 2020, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán proposed reform to the nation’s educational curriculum, which aimed to encourage nationalism and erase Hungarian military defeats from textbooks. Furthermore, the new National Core Curriculum would remove authors like Hungary’s only Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor, Imre Kertész, from required readings, instead replacing him with antisemites and charged war criminals like Jozsef Nyiro and Albert Wass. Orbán’s policy is reflective of Hungary’s growing authoritarian bent as it encourages a selective remembrance of the nation’s history and government intervention into the propagation of nationalist ideals in the media. Trump’s recent directive to the National Park Service reflects the same type of ideological gerrymandering that typifies Hungary’s unstable democracy. In early 2026, the Trump administration ordered the removal of a number of cultural sites that reflect America’s history of subjugation toward Indigenous peoples and slaves, as well as feminist and queer imagery. The targeted removals included exhibits memorializing the slaves of George Washington, forced removals of Native Americans, and women and immigrants in Massachusetts textile mills. The Trump administration claims the removals are targeted at removing “corrosive ideology,” but in practice, they reflect the same confounding ideals that Hungary uses to hide its losses and disparage its most deserving cultural icons.

As the parallels between American domestic and international politics and nations like Türkiye, El Salvador, and Hungary, the role of the US among the paragons of democracy is an increasingly dubious proposition. We must consider that the impacts of the “democratic recession” of the 21st century may expand beyond the bounds of destabilized minor powers, former Soviet republics, or frontline nations, but to the core of Western democratic thought.

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Why do students turn to generative tools?

Recent data illustrates how widespread this shift has become. A Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) survey conducted in February 2025 found that 88 per cent of students reported using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT for assessments, a stark difference from the 53 per cent of students who admitted to using generative AI the previous year. At the same time, the proportion of students who reported not using generative AI dropped sharply, from 47 per cent in 2024 to just 12 per cent in 2025. For many students, it seems as if AI tools have become a default form of academic support, used in response to mounting pressures such as heavy course loads, overlapping deadlines, and rising performance expectations.

Although the use of generative AI is usually interpreted as a form of academic misconduct, such actions cannot be understood solely through the lens of cheating. In fact, the HEPI survey shows that students most commonly use AI tools to explain unfamiliar concepts, summarize readings, and generate research ideas — reasons that fall within many schools’ integrity guidelines. McGill’s Office of the Dean of Students emphasizes the “vital importance” of academic integrity, underscoring values such as honesty and “giving credit where credit is due.” For many, AI functions less as a shortcut to bypass academic work and more as a support mechanism. However, this normalization of AI use comes with uncertainty. When the boundaries between acceptable use and misconduct remain unclear or inconsistently enforced, students are left navigating a grey zone, unsure whether the tools they rely on may later be used against them.

At the same time, not all students engage with AI in ways that align with institutional policies. Some rely on generative tools to produce substantial portions of their assignments, directly undermining not only the value of their work but also violating “the academic integrity of the University” itself. From an instructor’s perspective, distinguishing between legitimate support and misconduct has become increasingly difficult. “AI is a great opportunity to personalize a student’s learning,” Desautels Vice-Dean Genevieve Bassellier notes. However, a student can prompt generative tools such as ChatGPT or DeepSeek to write entire essays in minutes, which leaves professors grappling with how to distinguish human work from machine- generated content. In many cases, the final submission may look the same, regardless of whether AI was used as a learning aid, a substitute for original work, or not used at all.

How are professors adapting to AI?

Concerns about academic integrity in the age of AI are being echoed at the institutional level. Research by UNESCO highlights how generative AI could disrupt assessment methods that rely primarily on final outputs such as essays. This demonstrates that when students can generate essays or reports in minutes, traditional indicators of effort and comprehension lose much of their reliability. The report thus encourages educators to place more focus on smaller step-by-step assignments that emphasize the learning process itself, such as journals or peer reviews.

At McGill, departments focused on written assignments — particularly in the arts and humanities — have introduced explicit AI policies in course syllabi. These disclosures increasingly restrict (or sometimes forbid) the use of AI for idea generation, formulation, or refinement. A similar effort to define boundaries of acceptable academic conduct can be seen in the introduction of a mandatory online Academic Integrity Tutorial in 2011. Required of both undergraduates and graduates, the tutorial walks students through scenarios involving plagiarism and academic misconduct, underscoring the idea that a degree earned through cheating is ultimately hollow. Students who fail to complete the module are unable to register for courses.

Moreover, many instructors are also reconsidering not only what they assess, but how and where that assessment takes place. In- person examinations restrict access to AI tools and allow professors to observe students’ reasoning directly. For many students, the effects of this shift are already tangible. During my first semester at McGill in Fall 2023, only two of my five courses required in-person final exams. By contrast, all five of my courses this semester rely on in-person exams for both midterms and finals.

Importantly, the return to in- person evaluation is not driven solely by concerns about security. As Dr. Andrew Woon argues in a 2025 report for HEPI, the value of exams lies in their ability to foster “deep, internalised understanding”— particularly in fields with higher stakes such as medicine or education. Dr. Woon explains that, while AI can assist with information retrieval or diagnostics, it cannot replace the human judgment required to interpret context, nuance, or ethical complexity. “We wouldn’t want to be treated by a doctor who relied on ChatGPT to make clinical decisions,” he notes. These types of professions require rigorous skills that must be practiced and assessed directly.

However, in-person written exams are not necessarily a perfect solution. Concerns about potential AI-assisted cheating have led some educators to explore oral examinations as an alternative. According to Dr. Kyle Maclean, assistant professor at Ivey Business School, live oral exams are “about as cheat-proof as it gets,” as they require students to explain their reasoning in real time. However, Dr. Maclean adds that oral exams present significant feasibility and equity challenges. They are difficult to scale in large undergraduate courses, grading can be less consistent, and their lack of anonymity raises concerns about potential bias. Moreover, such formats are widely reported as stressful by students, particularly those with anxiety or processing challenges, highlighting trade- offs inherent in assessment methods designed to limit AI use.

What does this shift mean for students?

While for instructors, the return of in-person exams may restore confidence in students’ academic integrity, the effects of this exam type on students are more complex. One of the less obvious ramifications is the reshaping of student behaviour, even among those who do not dishonestly rely on AI. As sanctions against AI- generated work become more common, some students have begun to self-police their writing to avoid suspicion. As an English student, I have found myself consciously altering stylistic habits such as avoiding em dashes — a punctuation mark frequently associated with AI-generated text — not because of academic guidance, but out of fear of being misidentified as relying on generative tools.

Beyond questions of perception, these changes also raise concerns about equity and accessibility. By shifting assessment formats rapidly, students registered with disability services may face additional barriers such as reduced access to accommodations, heightened anxiety, physical or sensory challenges, or disadvantages in oral assessments that rely on verbal fluency and performance. When accommodations are unevenly implemented or poorly adapted to oral or time-constrained assessments, exams eventually risk privileging student confidence over genuine comprehension.

In-person exams: harmful or helpful?

In-person examinations, while effective in limiting AI misuse, are not a comprehensive solution. Such exams may create fairness in one sense as they can standardize conditions and restrict cheating behaviour. Nonetheless, they risk pushing students to rely more heavily on AI elsewhere — readings, essays, research — in order to manage increased academic pressure which eventually weakens the value placed on out-of-class work. As long as generative AI remains widely accessible and difficult to regulate, attempts to fully exclude it from academic life are likely to remain imperfect.

Rather than framing such tools as a problem to be eliminated, universities may need to reconsider how AI can be integrated intelligibly into teaching and assessment. The future of evaluation may lie not in stricter controls alone, but in smaller classes, more project-based learning, and deeper, sustained conversations between students and faculty.

At a time when reliance on AI risks weakening foundational cognitive skills, academic degrees must be understood as a privilege rather than a shortcut. In this sense, instructors play a crucial role in designing learning environments that protect core intellectual abilities — restoring value to human reasoning instead of allowing it to be eclipsedd by digital assistance. “That’s why it’s even more important that we continue to enforce the basic knowledge,” Bassellier notes. Ultimately, the challenge facing higher education is not how to assess without AI, but how to design systems of evaluation that continue to reward curiosity, effort, and the ability to think critically with it, to strike a balance in which AI can support, rather than undermine, student learning.

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Behind the scenes, this reaction is not hard to understand. For years, many Venezuelans abroad have described exile as a permanent state of suspended life: careers restarted, families split, and a homeland that feels simultaneously intimate and unreachable. When Maduro was captured, the celebration was not simply political; it was cathartic, an assertion that impunity for alleged state repression and serious human rights abuses is not inevitable.

However, almost immediately, the story was filtered through the attention economy: a flood of posts, some genuine and some fabricated, competed to frame the event in various ways. Some claim it was liberation and long-delayed accountability, many said it was an illegal ‘kidnapping’ and sovereignty violation, others called it a security-and-drug operation. A few posts even layered on oil-motive claims and conspiracy narratives that muddied verification. By January 5, major media outlets and fact-checkers were reporting on and debunking AI- generated images and repurposed videos which falsely presented Maduro in custody or crowds celebrating in Caracas. In other words, both the jubilation and the backlash were real and so was the manipulation of each across platforms online.

Courtroom images, diplomatic backlash, and the legality problem

On January 5, Maduro and Flores appeared in a Manhattan federal court and pleaded not guilty to charges including narco-terrorism conspiracy and weapons counts involving machine guns and destructive devices. Yet, Maduro called the US operation a “kidnapping.” By the time courtroom photos of the two circulated, opinions about the legitimacy and legality of the US intervention had already solidified. The same day, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting in which Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Russia, and China condemned the operation as a breach of sovereignty which set a dangerous precedent.

What makes this event so controversial is that it sits at the intersection of two opposing narratives. The first perspective on Maduro’s capture has underlying moral and emotional justifications because the removal of a leader accused of repression may appear just. On the other hand, the legal and structural complications of Maduro’s capture blurs the boundaries between arrest and war. This view questions the legality of a powerful state seizing a president in a foreign country and reframing the use of force as “law enforcement.”

On January 4, 2026, Chatham House argued that the capture and attacks had “no justification in international law,” emphasizing that the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force is not optional. On January 6, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that the world is “less safe” when such interventions occur and stressed that Venezuela’s future must be determined by Venezuelans.

National governments echoed that same concern. On January 3, China’s foreign ministry said it was “deeply shocked” and “strongly” condemned the strikes and Maduro’s capture as a blatant use of force against a sovereign state. On January 6, Mexico’s president denounced the intervention as undermining democracy and stability in Latin America. On the same day, Russia backed Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez as the country’s interim leader and denounced what it described as neocolonial threats against Venezuela. None of those statements however seem to have been made in sympathy for Maduro. Instead, they reflect something more complex: a fear of past events.

Why Iraq still matters: a dictator’s fall is the easy part

The argument most often deployed to dismiss these concerns is simple; Maduro is viewed as a dictator, so the means of removing him are treated as less important than the result.

Iraq is a cautionary example of how quickly “liberation” framed by external powers can curdle into a long and violent aftermath. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq under the suspicion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Those claims later unraveled: in October 2004, media reports summarized the Iraq Survey Group’s conclusion that Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. Despite many Iraqis’ welcoming Saddam’s fall, that initial relief did not prevent the rapid unraveling of the Iraqi state. In the first months of the occupation, the Coalition Provisional Authority’s de-Ba’athification policy and decision to dissolve the Iraqi army stripped ministries and security forces of their institutional capacity, left large numbers of armed men unemployed, and helped fuel a growing insurgency and sectarian violence. Over the following decade, that instability and weakened governance contributed to fragmentation, including conditions that enabled al-Qaeda in Iraq and later allowed for ISIS to gain ground.

By December 31, 2011, the Iraq Body Count documented 120,108 civilian deaths from violence since the 2003 invasion, a verifiable minimum that includes killings attributed to multiple actors, not only US forces. Iraq Body Count reports that 15,163 (13 per cent) of those documented civilian deaths were directly caused by the US-led coalition.

The political economy of war also matters here. On August 12, 2008, the US Congressional Budget Office wrote that contractors played a “substantial role” in supporting US military, reconstruction, and diplomatic operations in Iraq. That reliance is not a side detail: it shows how quickly a war can become an outsourced project, where major decisions about security, logistics, and rebuilding are filtered through contracts- arrangements that can dilute accountability and shape priorities in ways that don’t reliably align with democratic stabilization.

The takeaway is not that Venezuela will become Iraq, but that forcefully removing a regime is often the simplest phase in regime change, and that the incentives shaping what comes next, including money, contracts, security partnerships, and resource access, do not reliably align with nation-building or democracy. This is why diasporic Venezuelan rejoicing and international alarm can both be rational responses to the same event: celebration can be sincere and anxiety can have logical roots.

Venezuela’s oil is structural, not incidental

Any analysis of what comes next also has to contend with the central material stake in Venezuela’s crisis: oil. Venezuela is an oil superpower on paper, despite years of declining production. The US Energy Information Administration estimates Venezuela holds about 303 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves, the largest in the world. That reality shapes both external interest, internal vulnerability, and the rhetoric surrounding the intervention. In the immediate aftermath of Maduro’s capture, multiple news accounts emphasized that US officials were already discussing Venezuela’s oil future and that global markets were watching whether Venezuelan heavy crude could flow again toward Gulf Coast refineries. By January 15, the Trump administration had also escalated its sanctions enforcement at sea, with US forces seizing another Venezuela-linked tanker in the Caribbean. Separately, Chevron was reported to be in talks with US officials about expanding its Venezuela operating license to increase crude exports.

Even during the celebrations of Maduro’s capture, some coverage noted an undercurrent of unease about what comes next, especially after Trump said the US would “run” Venezuela temporarily until what he called a “safe” transition could be arranged. This is not a conspiracy theory, it’s how geopolitics works when a country sits atop a resource that powers modern economies. The fear is not simply that the United States removed Maduro. It is that the post- Maduro state will be shaped around oil extraction before Venezuelan civil society can rebuild democratic legitimacy on its own terms.

The worry is not about Maduro, it’s about what follows

By January 6, Venezuela had entered a volatile political transition: Maduro in US custody, Delcy Rodríguez sworn in as interim leader, and an international environment split between celebration among Venezuelans abroad and diplomatic condemnation. On January 14, Trump and Rodríguez each described a phone call as “positive,” underscoring how quickly the US shifted from military action to direct engagement with Caracas. Symbolic gestures quickly became part of official politics. On January 15, opposition leader María Corina Machado presented Trump with her Nobel Peace Prize medal during a White House meeting: an attention- grabbing gesture that drew praise from some anti-Maduro supporters, backlash from critics, and a reminder from Nobel officials that the prize itself cannot be transferred. In the days that followed, Rodríguez’s government announced the release of political detainees. These moves were welcomed by Washington but disputed by NGOs, which said the verified number lagged behind official claims. The information ecosystem is already polluted with AI-generated “proof,” making it easier for every side to claim inevitability and harder for the public to judge the legitimacy of the transition.

The central question, then, is not whether Venezuelans are justified in celebrating. Many are, and those emotions should not be dismissed. The question is whether the world is watching the beginning of a democratic transition, or the start of a familiar cycle: dramatic removal, legal controversy, and a battle to control the story, all of which shapes how legitimacy of the transition is granted or withheld.

History suggests that the most consequential phase is rarely the capture. It is the months after the capture, when power is redistributed, violence is either contained or unleashed, and “rebuilding” becomes either a civic project or a contract economy. If unilateral intervention can be normalized by framing it as “policing,” Venezuela will not be an exception, it will be a precedent that other states invoke the next time they decide to cross a border in the name of enforcement.

The post Venezuela After Maduro: Celebration Meets Precedent appeared first on The McGill Daily.

While she suggests that boyfriends are widely seen as embarrassing, the true focus of Joseph’s article is that heteronormativity is being challenged in the modern day – causing the concept of the boyfriend to now be fragile. This is because women don’t need to center men to succeed anymore.

Historically, being tied to a man was considered desirable for women. Others looked at you with great accomplishment for having a husband or a boyfriend. On the other hand, if you were a single woman, people pitied you. Take a look at Sex and the City; the entire show is about single women who are constantly being looked down upon by other couples and always in search of a new relationship. The goal of a long-term relationship rules the main characters’ lives.

Romantic relationships have long been deemed necessary to live a fulfilling life; craved because of the comfort of mutual dependence. On the one hand, Joseph mentions that being single, though, should be treasured because it allows for more independence than being a woman in a relationship. On the other hand, it’s not that a woman cannot be independent while she’s in a relationship. She should have the autonomy to do what she wants, including being in that relationship. Yet, it’s also important that we recognize that many women now have the privilege to achieve what they want without the imposed necessity of a romantic relationship.

During most of the 20th century, a woman would have needed to be married to have access to fundamental rights in the United States. For example, it was only with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 that an unmarried woman in the United States could open a credit card in her own name. In addition, unmarried women did not have access to birth control until the 1972 Supreme Court case Eisenstadt v. Baird. In other words, rights we now take for granted were not accessible for single American women before the 1970s.

Across the world, countless women still lack access to these basic rights. Millions of women do not have the right to participate in society without being bound to a man. In Afghanistan, women’s access to healthcare is dwindling. Hologic’s Global Women’s Health Index determined that “relatively few Afghan women reported getting tested for high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer or sexually transmitted diseases or infections (STDs/STIs) in the 12 months prior. In fact, no Afghan women — zero respondents — said they had been tested for any type of cancer in the past year.” Additionally, in 2021, Taliban authorities made it mandatory for women who are travelling more than 48 kilometres be accompanied by a male guardian. These women suffer from a lack of care and autonomy in controlling their own health in comparison to the Western women. Instead, their health is at the responsibility of the men who surround them. This is also true regarding their economic independence, as less than 7 per cent of Afghan women have a bank account. The United Nations estimates that, worldwide, 43.7 per cent of women “lack decision-making power over their sexual and reproductive health and rights.” In many countries, not just Afghanistan, women are being denied their rights and have to depend on a man to survive. Joseph’s original article questions women’s reliance on men, and allows us to address the cultural differences and privileges that come with being single and being able to denounce having a male partner. However, the power to decentralize men is not something that every woman has had or will have the privilege of doing.

In a world where we are continuously fighting for our rights purely because of our gender, at the very least, it’s comforting to know that women, more so in privileged areas of the world, don’t have to be associated with a man to succeed. If you have or want a boyfriend, there’s nothing wrong with that. As Joseph made clear, having a boyfriend is only embarrassing if you center your life around him. Moreover, being a single woman is something that is now treasured rather than looked down upon. According to Joseph, being single isn’t an achievement, nor does it “affirm your womanhood” anymore. The status of being single is being reclaimed, and is now associated with freedom and choice.

To continue on Joseph’s point about centering one’s life around a man, whether single or in a relationship, a woman can be male-centered, which is the primary condition being criticized in her article. Being male-centered may consist of solely posting your boyfriend on your social media, making decisions based on the needs of men, or consistently seeking male validation and attention. It can become a problem because, as one Medium blogger put it, needing a male’s approval for your decisions “puts your self-esteem in someone else’s hands.” In relationships specifically, being male-centered is when a woman “constantly puts her partner’s needs and desires ahead of her own.” It’s harmful to her autonomy, outlook and participation in relationships.

But instead of blaming women for this mindset, we should blame how patriarchal society has
conditioned women to believe that they need a man to live happily. While being male-centered is a condition that can be avoided, it’s not easy when society is pushing you to get and keep a man romantically in your life.

It shouldn’t be inherently embarrassing to have a boyfriend, so long as he does not become the center of your world. Thus, the current shift away from boyfriends stems from an active attempt to decentralize men. Unfortunately, this debate still centers men, because while we are talking about the decreasing value of the boyfriend, we are simultaneously faulting women for being with men. If we want to truly decentralize men, we need to move away from the concept that a man is needed to make your life better whilst also not making them the center of our conversations.

Having said that, we can still recognize that many single women are now much more capable of claiming their independence compared to our past counterparts. While this doesn’t cover all women in the world, as many are still stuck depending on men, it is still a reflection of our changing society and the questioning of heteronormativity and the patriarchy.

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Not being able to find people to accompany me to concerts, art launches, open mics, craft workshops, etc., did not stop me from trying to attend as many of these events as possible. Reading this may lead people to assume I am an outgoing, extroverted person; however, I consider myself to be quite solitary. I enjoy being by myself — it allows me to soak in what is happening around me better, whether it is live music, an art exhibition, spoken poetry or the atmosphere of a coffee shop. I am more than happy to wander into a random event, sit at the bar with my book, a glass of cider, and listen to the jazz band playing (which I have done on many occasions at Barbossa; I could not recommend their Monday jazz nights enough).

Before confessing this to my friends, I thought attending events alone was a common thing for people to do. Why would I stop myself from enjoying something I’m excited about simply because no one I know is interested in joining me? This, to me, seems more odd than choosing to go by myself — I even admit that, at first, it did not even occur to me that solo dates might be fear-inducing. I appreciate the anonymity that comes with being in a crowd of strangers, as well as the pleasant serendipity of bumping into a friendly face or connecting with someone spontaneously, even if this newly formed bond lasts only for the night. After an enlightening conversation with a close friend on our different environments growing up, I may have finally identified the small but critical nuance that influences our views on spending time alone: whether we perceive loneliness as externally inflicted or personally intentional. Growing up as an only child, I learned to bear solitude with pride. As an adult, it became a choice I made when I noticed my social batteries running low. It was a good compromise; I was still able to enjoy shows and artistic events without the added awareness or pressure of ensuring my friend was enjoying themselves as much as I was. Yet, for her, solitude seemed to signify a social shortcoming, and often rhymed with the fear of missing out (FOMO). Was it even worth attending an event if there was no one to bond with?

Reflecting on post-pandemic times when social restrictions were lifted, the sudden possibility of letting the outside world back in seemed daunting for many of us. Our efforts in learning to be comfortable in our own company now seem to have yielded the opposite problem. My tendency to overthink leads me to worry that my recurring desire for solitude might get in the way of my ability to form and maintain long-term friendships. Is our generation, with more options for remote work and solo living, increasingly struggling with building close social bonds? There may not be a solution to achieving a perfect balance between investing in our friendships and our alone time. Sometimes, what we need is simply to listen to our intuition — whether it’s to plan quality time with friends, attend an anticipated event alone or just be a homebody.

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In 1993, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel signed the Oslo Accords, lighting the path for a two-state solution: a framework ensuring two sovereign states. While the deal pledged a peaceful compromise to the never-ending conflict, more than three decades later, the world seems nowhere closer to achieving this utopic ideal. This begs the question: is the two-state solution even feasible?

For the last two years, a nation’s “right to exist,” has been a common subject of debate. This discourse revealed the West’s efforts to reassert its moral authority while continuing to protect their political interests through various trade agreements. Canada, the UK, and France formally recognized the existence of Palestine. Meanwhile, the United States, which arguably is one of the most influential international players in the current conflict itself, is one of the few countries that has not formally recognized a Palestinian state. President Donald Trump’s recent claims that he has solved the conflict captures his performative approach to diplomacy. He has taken credit for organizing a ceasefire, which was promptly violated, while also asserting that the US will “take over” Gaza. His recent proposal, the Board of Peace, a newly formed independent commission with the goal of achieving an independent Palestine has drawn significant concern. The commission is headed by Tony Blair, a controversial figure given his long history with the Middle East, dragging the UK into the War in Iraq, and the atrocities that followed. Rather than self autonomy, this initiative appears to only cement US control in the region.

The UK and Canada recently began to take on a more active role in the conflict by sending large amounts of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Take for example Canada, who has pledged 355 million dollars. Meanwhile, the total amount given by the United Nations (UN) between 2014-2020 has reached 4.5 billion dollars, and it has only increased. However, sympathetic sentiments and words of support are not enough; few nations have attempted to distance themselves from Israel economically. France had multiple Israeli defence firms at a recent expo, despite banning them earlier in the year, and as the war continues, civilians are still being killed despite a supposed ceasefire. This lack of substantial solidarity reveals that merely recognizing Palestine often absolves these nations from taking concrete action towards supporting Palestinian statehood.

The lack of coordinated action from the UN highlights their failure. Despite the multiple General Assembly votes to create a Palestinian state, the amount of effort exerted to aid Palestine has been close to none. The security council’s veto powers only prove the UN’s failure to make meaningful change, as the US vetoed multiple resolutions attempting to end the conflict. By vetoing most of the resolutions proposed, the US had prevented meaningful UN action leaving the organization to stand by, as to not interrupt the interests of their permanent members. Without a centralized and neutral organization capable of enforcing agreements necessary to produce an autonomous Palestinian state, the state will not emerge. It is clear that the institutional structure needed for a two-state solution does not exist in the UN.

Even if we ignore every political obstacle, the realities of the situation are damning. The region is geographically split in two. Palestinians reside in the West Bank and Gaza, with each territory operating under rival political authorities: Fatah and Hamas. Both authorities are at the behest of the economic power of Israel and, as a whole, Palestine lacks control over its borders. This economic and geographical control came as a result of the Oslo Accords that were meant to allow for the eventual emergence of a Palestinian state. Yet to me, this is the textbook definition of institutional subjugation. The lack of action from the international community and Palestinians’ structural dependence on Israel requires Israel’s presence at the negotiating table. However, Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister of Israel, is difficult to reason with.

Netanyahu, a wanted war criminal in various parts of the globe, has stated the possibility of a two-state solution in a speech. However, he simultaneously told the UN that any vote in support of a two-state solution should not be passed. Netanyahu is also the architect of the continued wanton killing of Palestinian people. He asserts he would allow a Palestinian state if certain preconditions are met: the redrawing of the borders to one that is favourable to Israel, the acceptance that annexed land is now Israeli, and a requirement for Palestinian demilitarization. This does not create a state; it creates a faux-nation susceptible to attack and theft from its neighbour, which has repeatedly proven it will take advantage of such opportunities. To assume that these preconditions would be accepted by Palestinians is an absurd presumption; it does not guarantee them self- determination and is suggestive of a colonial Israeli agenda.

If there is any hope for the existence of a two-state solution, it cannot reiterate the colonial systems that initially removed Palestinians’ authority. The steps towards Palestinian autonomy that have been proposed have only been reminiscent of these same colonial policies. So far, the future looks bleak, and the two- state solution has now, more than ever, been exposed as the carrot- on-a-stick that it is, absolving the international community from taking action. While I pray that this inaction will change in our lifetimes, without large institutional reform, neutral governing bodies, and changes to past agreements, the two-state solution will remain a fantasy. The question is no longer, is the two-state solution ideal or equitable, but instead, should we continue to pretend that it is even possible?

For me, at least, the answer to that is no.

The post The Death of the Two-State Illusion appeared first on The McGill Daily.

As a major urban hub in Canada and the most populous city in Quebec, Montreal differs from the rest of the province in terms of its vast linguistic and cultural plurality. This diversity is often perceived as either a threat to the French language, or as an opportunity to embrace the privilege of multilingualism.

If there’s one thing I have learned in my three years studying linguistics, it’s that language changes. All languages spoken today are merely a result of countless natural transformations throughout human development, in spite of longstanding anti- change narratives. These range from Plato’s complaints about the deterioration of Ancient Greek, to Cicero regarding Latin, to critics of Shakespeare’s neologisms. I have also been well trained to notice red flags whenever conservative discourse about language emerges: be it when people claim that contemporary slang is corrupting our speech, or attempt to police how people should and shouldn’t talk. Quebec’s recent Bill 96, which aims to minimize foreign language use in product labels and business signs, raised one of these red flags.

While the history of the French language in the province should be respected and assimilation into Quebecois(e) culture should be encouraged, using a tape measure to check if French writing occupies over 50 per cent of every sign’s surface area is definitely not the way to achieve this. Fining business owners $30,000 CAD for failing to conform to these guidelines is ineffective as a method to foster a new francophone community. The same goes for censoring the cheerful “Go Habs go!” signs in buses for “promoting anglicism,” which not only ignores an attempt to nurture a communal sense of pride among Montrealers, but also inspires more division than unity.

In my conversation with Dr. Charles Boberg, a professor of sociolinguistics at McGill, he explains how both sides of the French language debate are valid. On one hand, he points to the fact that our new mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada, born in Chile, describes herself as a “daughter of Bill 101,” exemplifying the law’s success at integrating immigrants in Montreal using French. On the other hand, he argues that the tens of millions of dollars spent by the “language police” to reinforce the use of French could instead be allocated to paying bus drivers, supplying hospitals, and improving our schools.

Dr. Boberg also raises the question of how, in Quebec, there is an “ethnocentric nationalist protection of French and only French.” Despite being spoken by 85 per cent of the inhabitants of Quebec, French has been granted far more safeguarding measures than Cree, Mohawk, and Innu-aimun, endangered languages threatened on a larger scale due to historical marginalization.

This leads us to the problematic nature of Quebec’s nationalist approach of equating language to culture. Defining Quebec through the French language alone rids the province of the opportunity to further recognize its rich and diverse culture. This overemphasis on the French language erases the history of immigration and diversity that has been prevalent in the province for generations, particularly in the construction of Montreal. If being Quebecois(e) is defined only in terms of speaking French, what does this mean for the status of new immigrants and anglophones that have resided in Montreal for centuries?

From the standpoint of an outsider, when I hang out with my proud Quebecois(e) friends and observe the cultural unison of francophones, it doesn’t seem to me like French is going anywhere anytime soon. The conservation of the province’s astonishing culture, though, can only be attained from within: from the people’s motivation to speak the language of their grandparents and to keep the tradition going for generations to come. And this can be accomplished alongside welcoming change and the opportunities that new languages can bring.

In the city of “Bonjour Hi,” the eternal English/French debate should be settled by embracing the power in the metropolis’ bilingual identity.

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When the Syndicat du transport de Montréal (STM) workers went on strike earlier this fall from September 22 to October 5, students and faculty across Montreal were left scrambling. Many adjusted their schedules, carpooled, or resorted to costly rideshares just to make it to class or work. Now, with a second, longer strike running from November 1 to November 28, frustration and confusion is mounting.

The STM is demanding improved working conditions, job security, and fairer compensation in the face of budget constraints and increasing service demands. Negotiations with the syndicate’s management have repeatedly stalled, leading to this extended strike action. For the union, walking out again isn’t a rash decision, it’s a last resort after weeks of unsuccessful talks and what many describe as “stagnant” offers from STM leadership.

In response, Quebec’s Labour Minister Jean Boulet appointed a new mediation team, expressing hope it would have a “positive impact” on negotiations. Former Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante likewise urged both STM and the union to “work together in good faith” to resolve the impasse. Yet, despite these interventions, progress remains limited, with un. ion leaders arguing that government gestures do little to address fundamental issues like pay scales and scheduling.

In parallel, the labour tribunal is now being asked to rule on what level of “essential services” the STM must maintain, and the province is preparing legislation aimed at curbing strike tactics in public transit.

However, from a commuter’s perspective, the situation feels dire. Buses and metros are the city’s lifeline, and the impact of service disruptions ripples across college and university campuses. Students relying solely on public transit are facing academic and financial strain, especially those living far from their institutions.

The strike escalation continues: on November 1, STM bus drivers and metro operators halted service entirely for a day, marking a full shutdown of Montreal’s public transit system. The union had also announced plans for additional walkouts on Nov. 15 and 16 if no deal is reached. As the city braces for another complete stoppage, Montreal business owners worry the ongoing STM strike could hurt sales, as fewer customers and employees are able to travel easily to shops and workplaces.

Among students, opinions are split. Some see the strike as necessary labor action, recognizing that transit workers keep Montreal moving and deserve fair treatment as well as safe, sustainable conditions: “If the workers aren’t being heard, this is the only way to make STM listen,” one Concordia student said to the Daily.

Others, however, express growing resentment. To them, the repeated strikes feel like collective punishment: “I get why they’re striking, but it’s really hard not to be angry when I’m late to midterms because there’s no bus,” said a McGill student.

This tension raises a deeper question: who’s to blame? The union, for pushing too hard? Or STM management, for failing to meet basic demands? Many students from universities in downtown Montreal admit they’re unclear about what exactly led to the breakdown in talks, highlighting a broader communication gap between transit officials, the union, and the public.

I’s tempting to frame the strike as a simple “workers versus commuters” issue, but that misses the point. If transit employees are underpaid, overworked, and under- supported, the long-term consequences could be far worse than a few weeks of delays. A demoralized workforce means unreliable service year-round.

Until both sides find common ground, Montrealers, particularly students, will continue to bear the cost of stalled negotiations. With a full shutdown looming and students already facing disrupted schedules, the stakes could hardly be higher. The question now is how many more strikes it will take before STM leadership finally gets the message.

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