As we are all well aware, McGill has faced minor financial issues for quite some time now. For the 2025-2026 school year, our university has a minuscule projected deficit of $45 million CAD. Fortunately, so far, this deficit has only led to an abundance of staff cuts, cutting the majority of McGill’s sports teams, a hiring moratorium, and cuts to infrastructure spending. But fear not! In a wave of innovation, McGill has come up with a seemingly unorthodox budgeting technique to be implemented in the upcoming 2026-2027 academic year: Student cuts.
Under these exciting new regulations, McGill will ask any returning students with a GPA lower than 3.9 to leave the university. The logic is simple: The school desires to more quickly offset the ever-increasing budget deficit, and to represent the brightest young minds of Canada. It’s killing two birds with one stone! Another benefit of this genius plan is that it will minimize the number of distressed athletes on campus who have lost their athletic careers to McGill Athletics’ whims. It’s truly a win for everyone on campus.
The news has unsurprisingly caused outrage everywhere on McGill’s campus this past week. Students have raised subsidiary concerns, such as noting the fact that GPAs vary across different faculties, or that McGill’s ordinary grade deflation might make it more difficult to reach the required 3.9 GPA every semester. Students have also brought attention to the fact that McGill should maybe rethink the rigour of its academic courses.
While there is widespread anger throughout McGill’s student body, the greatest indignation comes from students who are set to graduate next year. Unfortunately, if they do not meet the required 3.9 GPA, they will be asked to leave the university and explore exciting transfer opportunities to alternative institutions. One student familiar with the matter declared their distaste with this decision, as the news //kind of// interrupted their senior-year plans—specifically, to graduate and obtain the degree they paid thousands of dollars for.
Additionally, talks have come about of a plan to TP the dean’s office in a defiant act of resistance. Suspiciously enough, Dollarama and Uniprix have reportedly both run out of toilet paper this weekend. When questioned by The Tribune, a Dollarama employee claimed to have seen a horde of angry-looking customers wearing desecrated McGill merch storming to the cleaning aisle. Next thing they knew, all of the toilet paper was gone.
McGill’s administration is planning to combat the protests by increasing the already imposing security presence on campus. Only this time, they can’t afford to hire any more personnel. To keep the peace, the administration will resort to stationing TAs in front of every building on campus, from Sherbrooke 680 up to the Mont Royale lookout, for the next few weeks. Yes, this does mean that all conferences will be cancelled.
These student cuts, while in theory academically inequitable, have really brought on a wave of unity for the students of McGill, forcing them to band together in the face of a dreadful threat to many of their academic careers. The real question is: What is next? Cutting bathrooms? Getting rid of Hotdog Man? We have yet to find out. But we know one thing for certain: We need to start studying for finals. Now.