It can happen anywhere, at any time. It is social torture. It is the Awkward Conversation-insignificant, trite repartee that neither party engaging in it cares about. Drawing from personal experience, the Panthea Institute of Over-analysis will now review three main sources from which it stems.
Opinion
Opinions from our editorial board and contributors.
Ain’t nothing but a P thang: Confessions of a snob
Did you see what she is wearing? Omigod, I can’t believe he just said that! Admit it, we all pass judgments on others for the silliest of things-their outfits, their musical preferences, whatever. It’s human nature. There is a bit of snob in each of us. In my case, however, it is more than just a bit.
PIÑATA DIPLOMACY: Ricky’s regret
If I regret any of my columns from this year, it would be February’s “Middle-class guilt.” My regret isn’t so much over the views I tried to express, but over the fact that I haven’t yet negotiated a comfortable balance between the nuanced views I try to maintain and my emotional writing style, which tends to be excessive and – as my mother complains – angry.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Brahnaphobia
Re: “Sportsophobia” by Brahna Siegelberg (30.03.10) I always wanted to attend a great academic post-secondary institution, and I thought that McGill was the right school. However, after reading “Sportsophobia,” written by a fellow McGill student, my impression of the school is somewhat diminished.
COMMENTARY: TA (NGST)
I arrived in Montreal in Fall 2008 eager to begin my graduate career at McGill as a master’s student in political science. I knew McGill had a reputation for academic excellence and talented, open-minded, and intellectually stimulating students and faculty members.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: The democratic hacky sack
Last Thursday, as I sat through Students’ Society Legislative Council, I felt like my nails were being pulled out of my fingers. I heard the word “democracy” being thrown around like a hacky sack as councillors took turns accusing others of infringing on their ‘democratic right’ to speak and then carefully stroking their own and, indeed, everyone’s ego with a passionate appeal to the ‘democratic process.
EDITORIAL: J-Board should throw out case against Newburgh
On Friday, the Students’ Society’s Judicial Board will hear Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights’ case against Zach Newburgh, SSMU’s speaker of council and SSMU president-elect. SPHR claims that by acting as chair of the Winter General Assembly, Newburgh “placed himself in a serious conflict of interest, making it impossible for him to perform his task in an impartial manner” during the debate over the motion “Re: The Defence of Human Rights, Social Justice, and Environmental Protection.
THE SITUATION: Turn to the right
I thought I knew who I was before I came to university. I thought, for instance, that I wasn’t a racist. But when I told two girls tabling against Israel that the State had a right to exist, they cleared that up for me. Which was lucky, because after a year of educating my Jewish youth group on the dangers of Islamophobia, I might have gone my whole life not knowing how much I hated people different from me.
EDITORIAL: The wrong McMann for the job
After what can only be called an absolute debacle in 2005, 2006 was supposed to be different for the McGill football program. With their off-field issues supposedly behind them and a strong nucleus of veterans on offence, Head Coach Chuck McMann set the second round of the playoffs as the team’s goal.
WET PAINT: ‘Talking is just masturbating without the mess’
I’ve recently noticed a change in the way people are talking. From the street to the metro and from the library to the grocery store, people everywhere are talking to themselves. While I encountered this widespread habit upon first moving to Montreal and tried to think of it as one of our city’s endearing little quirks, the trend seems to have increased of late.
