McGill students Joel Pedneault and Micha Stettin were exonerated Friday on charges of disrupting university activities due to their involvement in a demonstration in support of MUNACA on Oct. 11.

Pedneault, VP External of SSMU, and Stettin, Arts Representative to SSMU, were originally accused of violating two sections of the McGill Code of Student Conduct which included ‘disruption of university activities’ and ‘unauthorized presence.’

Both were cleared of any offences after an interview on Friday morning with Associate Dean of Arts Andre Costopoulos. Costopoulos found the evidence against them to be inadequate.

Stettin and Pedneault were both satisfied by the outcome.

“It was clear throughout the half hour interview that the evidence was patently false on numerous counts and deliberately selective and exaggerated where it described actual occurrences,” Stettin said in an email to the Tribune.

Pedneault had not been present at the demonstration. His name was mentioned in a report by McGill’s head of security to the associate dean, likely because he is a notable activist and supporter of the Mob Squad, the organization that planned the demonstration. Pedneault said he feels that the university had taken issue with the anti-administration stance of the demonstration.

“It’s almost as if [McGill security was] saying, ‘these people are guilty by association, so please be advised to go after them,'” Pedneault said. “I don’t think there’s any doubt as to why they decided to go after [us]. We’ve been in the media a lot to support labour rights on campus and speak out against the administration’s approach to labour relations.”

In the days following the announcement of the allegations, the claims received much attention from local media. On Oct. 25, Pedneault and Stettin appeared on CBC’s Daybreak Montreal to discuss the accusations.

While he wouldn’t comment on the specific incident, McGill’s Deputy Provost of Student Life and Learning, Morton Mendelson, told the Tribune that expression of free speech is always permitted on campus, but that it must be done in an organized way so as to not disrupt the workings of the university.

“All kinds of opinions are welcomed on campus,” Mendelson said. “There are constraints, [however], on forms of expression. Bullhorns outside a building with classrooms, [for example], aren’t acceptable.”

“Permission is granted independent of the content, as long as the content is legal,” he said. “If there is a barbeque to promote cause A versus cause B, there is nothing taken into account that says ‘well, we agree with cause A but we don’t agree with cause B, so we’re going to let cause A hold a barbeque and cause B not.’ That’s not what we do at a university.”

Stettin disagreed with Mendelson’s comments.

 “The administration has a robust disdain for any freedom of speech and assembly directed against them and their interests,” he said.

The fall referendum campaign period opens this week, and features two questions on whether QPIRG McGill and CKUT’s student fees should cease to be opt-outable via the Minerva online system and instead be refundable directly though each organization. Students will be able to vote on the questions from Nov 4-10.

Every five years, the Quebec Public Interest Research Group (QPIRG) and CKUT,  the official campus-community radio station, hold referenda in which the student body votes on the organizations’ existence. A ‘yes’ vote enables the groups to renew their Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with the administration, a document that governs each group’s relationship with the administration. Both MoAs will expire in June 2012.  

Fee levy refunds were available through each individual group until fall 2007, when McGill moved opt­—outs online to Minerva. That same fall, the General Asembly voted to reinstitue the old system and in winter 2008, students passed a referendum mandating SSMU to lobby for an end to the Minerva opt-out system. The administration did not change the system either time.

Since the system changed, there has been a marked increase in opt—out rates for all opt-outable organizations, with a divergence of only 0.5 to 1.5 per cent across the different student groups. This semester, several campus organizations, including QPIRG and CKUT, mounted their own campaign in response to the opt-out campaign called “Our Campus, Our Community” to raise awareness of projects funded with student fees.

Drain on the organization

Anna Malla, QPIRG’s internal coordinator, explained that the primary reason for the referendum question was the current system’s drain on QPIRG’s human resources.

“It’s very difficult when [the opt-out campaign is] not held accountable by any rules or standards, but QPIRG obviously as an organization is, so one of the primary reasons is that it’s a huge drain on our human resources, on our board and staff,” Malla said. “A lot of time and energy is spent, is misspent in my opinion, in defending ourselves against the kind of attacks that are just baseless and against misinformation instead of focusing on the really great work that we do on campus.”

Caitlin Manicom, CKUT funding and outreach co-ordinator, explained that the reasons for CKUT’s referendum are very similar to QPIRG’s.

“We simply cannot continue to exist with this type of blanket opting out,” Manicom said. “It’s a huge, huge drain on us, not only financially but also organizationally. When you have unregulated opt-out campaigns happening on campus, they encourage students to opt out regardless and so they blanket opt out of a number of different organizations without learning anything about them.”

 Last year, the fee levy for QPIRG was approximately $186,000 before opt-outs and $156,000 after. This year’s projected values are $190,000 before and $157,000 after, Malla said. Similarly, CKUT’s projected budget for will be $16,020 less than it would be without online opt outs. Last year, its operating budget was decreased by $27,191 after opt-outs, out of a budget of $422,572. CKUT’s budget is much larger than QPIRG’s due to its sponsors and funding drives.

If QPIRG and CKUT were allowed to administer their own opt-outs, students would have to go over to the groups’ individual offices to receive their refund. Manicom said that CKUT also intends to set up a table in the SSMU building during the refund period so students can get a refund on campus in addition to CKUT.

Question clarity

Some students believe that the wording of the referenda question may pose some problems for voters. Stephen David, U3 mining engineering, noted that the question combines two very different issues.

“I don’t support or oppose either [QPIRG or CKUT], but the problem is they’re forcing people to accept their methodology regarding the opt-out process,” David said. “I [kind of] feel like I’m being screwed. If you want them to continue to receive funding, you have to accept the terms of their opt-out scheme. If you don’t want to fund them, they’ve made your life harder.”

When asked why the two questions were combined, Malla pointed again to the drain in resources arising from the current system.

“Our very existence is at stake with the current system, and that is both in terms of our human resources at QPIRG as well as in terms of not being able to predict our finances for the year,” Malla said. “We actually will not be able to continue to exist under the current system, so it is an existence question.”

The wording of the question may pose challenges to QPIRG and CKUT with the administration. Deputy Provost of Student Life and Learning Morton Mendelson declined to answer whether the university would return the opt-out  system to the 2007 system if the referenda passed, calling the situation “hypothetical.” Nevertheless, he stressed the need for referendum questions to be clear and to effectively reflect student opinions.

“We have asked student groups going to referendum for confirmation that students approve of their continuation to do so with a question that is clear and to th
e point.  A confusing question does not provide a clear answer,” Mendelson wrote in an email to the Tribune. “We have not been able to implement some fee referenda when the questions have been incomplete or ambiguous.”

A question of existence

Malla did not disclose QPIRG’s options in the case that the majority of students vote no to the referendum question, although she did say that becoming part of SSMU is not an option.

“This is a question that we’ll have to address after the results of the referendum,” Malla said. “But if we don’t get a ‘yes’ vote we will no longer receive undergraduate student funding … so essentially it would mean that our organization would not exist.”

A “no” vote for CKUT would reduce the organization’s funding by over a third and may also cause the radio station to lose its location and broadcast license, Manicom said. CKUT is not looking to continue as a club under SSMU.

 “[CKUT occupies] two floors of the building that we exist in, a very large space, [with] over 300 volunteers … it is a campus-community radio station,” Manicom said. “I don’t think it’d make sense to be a club under SSMU. And I don’t think it would be financially feasible either.”

SSMU President Maggie Knight commented that an end to CKUT and QPIRG would have a notable effect on student life.

“If CKUT ceased to exist, that would be a huge blow to the Montreal community and a lot of students on campus that are very actively involved in radio production. We don’t have a journalism school … CKUT is the McGill school of radio in its own way,” Knight said. “As far as QPIRG goes … they have a lot of groups involved in a lot of causes, [and] many are dear to the heart of lots of students. It’s not only activism based on campus but also activism linked to the direct community.”

Sam Reynolds

Salim Mansur, himself an immigrant to Canada from India, may seem like an unlikely candidate to talk about the dangers posed by other cultures, yet he discussed just that in his McGill lecture on Oct. 17.

Mansur, a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario, is known to many as a critic of multiculturalism, governments in the Muslim world, and being staunchly pro-Israel. As a result of his stances, two fatwas have been issued against him.

“We are in a war, in a great global conflict in the beginning of the 21st century and we are again dealing with the question of freedom,” Mansur proclaimed at the beginning of his lecture.

Mansur argued that this war for freedom is a war of ideas and cultures, between those who favoured freedom of expression and liberal ideology, and those opposed to it. According to Mansur, the idea of the former co-existing with the latter is untenable because it implies treating all cultures and values as equal, even when they are not.

“You cannot have equality where the values of the Taliban [are] equal to the [values of] graduates of McGill University and [under law] you had better treat them as equal,” Mansur said. “Multiculturalism, as I came to experience it in Canada over the last four decades … is a delectable lie,” he added.

Marc Fortin, a U2 economics student and chief communications officer of the French section of the Prince Arthur Herald, co-sponsor of the event, found the lecture interesting.

“Multiculturalism is something that is really entrenched in our society right now. It’s something that everyone thinks is normal, but we find that there is a big problem with it,” he said.

“I think as a student, his message was to stand up for what you believe [in] and to stand up for liberty,” Fortin added.

Alexandre Meterissian, a board member of Conservative McGill and student host for the event explained that he brought Mansur to McGill because of his expertise on issues of immigration and multiculturalism.

“It’s good that we have these kind of discussions. It’s a major issue for the next generation, for our generation,” he said. “The main reason we brought the event on campus was to get more students involved.”

The sponsors for Mansur’s talk included Conservative McGill, the International Free Press Society,  whuch promotes free speech in Canada, and Act for Canada, a group which, according to its website, seeks to protect Canada from “radical Islam.”

“I am delighted because we actually want young people involved,”  Valerie Price, member of Act for Canada, said. “I think it’s really important. I’m really nervous about what’s going on around the world and in my country.”

While Mansur’s message could be considered controversial by some, it was well received by over 100 community members, faculty, and students who came to hear him speak.

Research In Motion (RIM) unveiled a next generation platform for its Blackberry smartphones on Oct. 18 at a developer conference in San Francisco. The operating system, known simply as BBX, aims to merge Blackberry’s current smartphone platform with that of its PlayBook tablet, QNX.  In an attempt to encourage developers, it will support new technologies, like HTML5, which will allow programmers to easily develop for both Blackberry smartphones and tablets.  

 While Blackberry sales continue to be strong in many parts of the world, the Waterloo-based RIM has recently faced stiff competition at home in the Android and iOS platforms of rivals Google and Apple. Drawing consumers  with their intuitive applications, access to media, and full-screen touch interfaces, Android and iPhone devices have eaten into much of Blackberry’s North American market share.

 Following the announcement, RIM’s shares rose 3.6 per cent in one day, a good sign for the troubled Canadian firm. Its stock has been down around 60 per cent since the beginning of this year.

 Industry opinion of BBX, however, has been less than positive; experts have called the venture everything from “just a pipe dream” (PCWorld) to “a tall order” (AnandTech).

 Joesph Vybihal, a faculty lecturer in McGill’s school of computer science, felt RIM took far too long to realize they needed to change their game plan.

 “It’s not a little bit late, it’s late,” he said. “While they were developing their Bold and Torch, they were saying, internally, we don’t need a tablet, we don’t need a phone like iPhone. Now they’re starting from nothing. There was a clear lack of view to the future.”

 RIM is trying hard to maintain the strength of its email and messaging functionality as well as its integration with corporate servers. These have always been its core assets.  

 “BBX embraces the best of the BlackBerry platform and the best of the QNX platform to create a brand new platform that extends the BlackBerry DNA of collaboration, communication and immediacy,” RIM said in an email to the Tribune.

 The firm’s attempt to encourage the creation of more applications is a hard sell, especially given that a release date for BBX has not been set and there are rumours the platform may not be available until 2013.

 “They’re saying: develop web applications now for two years from now, but two years from now Apple is going to do something else,” Vybihal said. “I don’t know if at the last [developer conference] they convinced everybody.”

 Application availability is everything in today’s mobile industry, and for now, the Blackberry platform lags behind with far fewer applications than the iPhone and Android.