Students’ Society Vice President External Myriam Zaidi plans to file a case with the SSMU Judicial Board against President Zach Newburgh over the alleged conflict of interest stemming from his involvement with Jobbook, an employment-based social networking website.

Concerned with the lack of “in-depth analysis of the conflict of interest policy and whether or not it was breached,” Zaidi said she wants to present all the new evidence that has come to light in various campus media outlets since the February 3 Council meeting at which councillors voted to censure Newburgh.

However, Newburgh believes that all pertinent available evidence has already been presented and that “there’s nothing lurking or hiding around any corners that people should still be waiting to hear about.”

Zaidi maintains that it is still important for the J-Board to have an outside perspective, to look into the financial transactions section of conflict of interest policy in order to arrive at a “final, impartial decision.”

“One thing that’s good about J-Board is that politics are not mixed into it, or other things like relationships,” Zaidi said. “All they look at is the policies.”

Zaidi added that since the J-Board’s main function is to interpret SSMU’s policies, they are most capable of providing a thorough and informed analysis of the issue at hand.

If the case is heard by the J-Board, Newburgh will be facing his second case concerning a violation of the conflict of interest policy.

Newburgh claims “to know this policy very well,” and to be comfortable at a hearing.

“It’s going to do a lot of clarifying on the issue and I think it’s clarification that’s certainly needed. Individuals need to know that there was not a policy breach, and I am looking forward to the verdict of the Judicial Board, if this case is if even heard. To my knowledge, there currently is no case in the first place,” Newburgh said.

Currently, no case has officially been filled with the J-Board, meaning that Newburgh is still unaware of the exact arguments that will be brought against him. Zaidi said she plans to file the case by next Monday.

Both Newburgh and Zaidi said that some review of the current conflict of interest policy ought to be undertaken in order to avoid future problems similar to those which arose this semester.

Meanwhile, Zaidi said there has recently been a “cloud” over the SSMU executive.

“Executives are more emotionally involved because it’s our day-to-day life, and we were a team. So there’s trust issues and things like that,” Zaidi said. “I talked with Zach and told him I still believe there was a conflict-of-interest breach and he said he doesn’t think there was. So I said that’s exactly why I want to [go to J-Board.]”

Newburgh, for his part, argued that the best way to move forward is to put SSMU’s focus back on the student body rather than on himself.

“What we ought to do is turn our focus back to the students where it ought to be,” Newburgh added. “But if this is the closure that some people need, then I’m happy to provide it.”

After many years of planning, deferred maintenance renovations are now under way in the McLennan and Redpath libraries. The project, which is planned to be completed by next September, will replace the libraries’ 50-year-old heating and cooling systems.

“In both of these libraries there’s a real variation in the comfort. It’s often too cold or too hot,” said Amber Lannon, the renovation’s project leader. “With the old equipment we have it’s hard to get the temperature in the right range.”

Lannon also noted that the new system will also be more environmentally efficient. During the replacement of the mechanical room equipment (scheduled for after the exam period) however, temperatures in the buildings may be warmer until the new equipment is in place. Students may also notice work in progress and increased noise.

Because the work will be constrained to relatively small areas however, Lannon is confident the impact on students will be limited.

“We can’t say there won’t be any impact during the exam period, because of course in the area being directly worked on, there will be impact,” she said. “But because they are going floor by floor and working on relatively small areas at a time, the impact should be minimal. We will direct students to other study areas as the work progresses.” Carole urbain, associate director of Client Services (Humanities, Law, Management and Social Sciences) added that access to the libraries’ collections should not be affected at any point. In addition, students will be kept up to date regarding where exactly in the library renovations are currently taking place through a special page on the library website. On site signage and renovation messages on public screens will also be posted throughout the library.

“The workers themselves will work from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.,” Urbain said. “Also, there will be no impact on the 24-hour access.”

For the current status on McLennan-Redpath library renovations, visit  mcgill.ca/library/library-about/renovations/

Students who live in McGill residences are all too familiar with fire drills. Last Tuesday, however, New Residence Hall experienced the real thing.

In the late morning, a small fire on the 14th floor set off the sprinklers, causing major water damage to 12 rooms, which has dislocated a number of students to a hotel for the rest of the semester.

After pulling an all-nighter for a chemistry midterm, Aleksandra, a student who wishes only to be identified by her first name, lit a scented candle on her windowsill to help herself fall asleep at 9:45 a.m.  Bothered by the sunlight coming through the window, she got up, shut the curtains, and went back to bed.

Her roommate returned from class around 10:10 and two minutes later the curtains were ablaze.

“I turned around and saw the fire a half a metre away from my head,” Aleksandra said.

The girls tried to smother the flames to no avail. They got a fire extinguisher from the hallway, but couldn’t get back into the room because the door had locked behind them. They went to pull the hallway fire alarms, but couldn’t get any to work. Frantically, they rushed down the building, stopping at each floor trying to find one that would sound. The alarms, in fact, were working, but the alert sounds had been disabled because of maintenance.

“The crazy coincidence, which had about the same odds as winning the lottery, was that we were doing some maintenance on the sprinkler system at that exact time, so we shut off the actual bell, not the alarm system, so that we wouldn’t accidentally have to evacuate 700 people,” said Michael Porritt, McGill director of residences.

Building employees used the building intercom to inform students, and the alarms, functioning silently, still notified the Montreal Fire Department. According to a Montreal Fire Department representative firefighters, received notice at 10:23 a.m. and had taken care of the fire by 11:20.  All 700 students in the residence were evacuated safely and efficiently.

“It was one of the fastest evacuations we’ve ever had,” said Porritt.

The fire did not spread beyond Aleksandra’s room, and only damaged the curtains, the window, the wall, and a pillow.  The real costs of the fire are a result of water damage. Sprinklers damaged four rooms on the 14th floor, four rooms on the 12th, and four rooms on the 11th badly enough that they will not be usable for the rest of the year. 20 students have had to move, 18 to the Delta Hotel at the intersection of President Kennedy and City Councillors Avenues, and two to other rooms in New Rez.  

According to an email sent from Porritt to all New Residence residents, construction on the damaged rooms will begin in May. Given that it will take six weeks, there is no incentive for McGill Residences to rush to complete it before the end of the school year as there is no chance that students will be able to move back into them. Meanwhile, Residences will be replacing wet drywall and insulation in the near future.

The estimated costs of the damage would not be available for several weeks, Porritt said. Also, at this point it is unclear whether Aleksandra will be held liable. Open flames are forbidden in McGill Residences, which might put her at risk. A disciplinary hearing is tentatively planned.

“It was a total accident,” said Aleksandra, “It could have happened to anyone.”

“I want to apologize to all the people who had to get relocated,” she added.

     On Saturday, March 12, Montreal saw a protest by thousands of people against austerity measures in the provincial budget, including a flat health tax and tuition hikes. Many students gathered in the rally organized by labour unions and student unions. However, 10 students were arrested before the protest even began.

     According to Students’ Society vice president external, Myriam Zaidi, these students were all dressed in black and were “not at all” representative of the protesters. Describing the arrests, Zaidi said it appeared that the police did not “want them to be marching in this family-friendly protest.”

     In addition, Zaidi said that because “they were all dressed in black … a lot of people couldn’t recognize them.” It is unknown whether any of these students were from McGill.

    Some McGill students did participate in the protest. They met in front of the SSMU building and proceeded to Place du Canada, where the demonstration began.

Alice Walker

Israeli Apartheid Week­­—a week-long series of events designed to raise awareness of alleged Israeli human rights violations against Palestinians—highlights the ongoing debate around the world concerning the birth of the Israeli state, as it did at McGill this past week.  

Israeli Apartheid Week is praised for its promotion of open-forum dialogue by some and condemned by those who believe it is anti-Semitic. This week’s events in Montreal elicited similar controversy.

Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah delivered the keynote address on Wednesday evening at the Bronfman Building. His talk, which was organized by Israeli Apartheid Week Montreal in conjunction with QPIRG McGill and Concordia, was designed to draw attention to policies Israel has imposed on Palestinians, which he called racist.  

“Israel is very, very committed to a one-state solution, but the only problem with Israel’s one-state solution is that it is an apartheid state,” Abunimah said.

Abunimah argued that Israel was limiting opportunities and rights to Palestinians based simply on their ethnicity, and covering up these abuses by either denying them or denouncing critics as “anti-Semites.”

“If Israel placed a different arbitrary restriction [on Palestinians] … and said you can’t come back because of your skin colour, then nobody would deny that this is apartheid,” he said.  

Aaron Lakoff, the event coordinator and a Concordia student, said the lecture was in keeping with Israeli Apartheid Week’s goals, which he described as “to foster education and debate on campuses.”

Lakoff added: “The issue [raised by Israeli Apartheid Week] is important for two reasons, the first being the magnitude of the situation. The war in Gaza in 2009 showed that Israel was strong and brutal enough to kill thousands of civilians. The second reason is because Canada is one of the biggest supporters of Israeli apartheid.”

Regarding the charges of some, notably Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, who recently described Israeli Apartheid Week as anti-Semitic. Lakoff responded that he sees a distinction between Judaism as a religion and the state of Israel.

“I myself as a Jew am incensed that Israel claims a right to speak for Jews around the world,” Lakoff said. “There is discord within the Jewish community and there is no consensus around Israel.”

Victoria Shore, a U3 humanistic  sudies major and president of Hillel McGill, a campus Jewish group, called Israeli Apartheid Week “divisive.” Responding to Abunimah’s lecture, she said, “University students are smart; if they do some reading, they will easily find that Israel is a fully functioning democracy, the only one, in fact, in the Middle East.”

“The week does not achieve dialogue about Palestinian human rights,” she added. “It only provides a negative environment for all students on campus. It creates a divisive and hostile atmosphere. University is meant to be a place that provides a positive learning environment, where issues can be discussed in an open forum, meant to provide real solutions to problems; this week is a platform for hate speech and intimidation.”

While McGill students debated, the same argument was echoed at a national level this week. The rector of Queen’s University, Nick Day, wrote an open letter to Ignatieff on news blog Rabble.ca to in favour of Israeli Apartheid Week, citing the Liberal leader’s “deep lack of intellectual integrity.” Day did not claim to be writing on behalf of students, but the letter makes reference to his elected position, and he signed the letter as “Rector.”  

Believing that this was an inappropriate use of his position, 2,200 students petitioned to have the Queen’s Alma Mater Society Assembly consider it at last Thursday’s meeting.  The Assembly voted unanimously to put the question of whether Day should be impeached to referendum. 

Jason Samson

Earlier this month, McGill PhD candidate Jason Samson and a number of other researchers released the world’s first map of human vulnerability to climate change.  

Samson, who studies climate change ecology, originally conceived of the idea while studying species adaptation to climate change. With his team, he applied similar techniques to human beings and found parts of Africa and Central America to be at the highest risk. Areas in the extreme global north and south, like Russia, Australia, and Canada, are in less danger.

“I was studying beavers and how they affect their environment,” Samson said. “I was also studying how species are affected by environment changes. We are seeing species move outside their normal range. Now we see species in Quebec we didn’t have before.”

While studying beavers, Samson came across a picture taken by NASA of the earth at night, and thought it would be interesting to see how humans are distributed across the globe and how they are affected by their environments.

“I used census data taken by governments all over, around 400,000 censuses from everywhere,” he said. “What I found is that human distribution is more related to environment than many other species like birds and trees. They tend to live in nicer climates, with very few living in the Arctic, Sahara, or the Amazon … It turns out climate is very important for where people live. “

Interestingly, some of the countries with the lowest emissions were found to be the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Murray Humphries, an associate professor in natural resource sciences at McGill, is Samson’s PhD supervisor and was a co-author of the paper.

“My main role was to encourage Jason in getting and following up on ideas,” Humphries said. “Lots of work has already been done in collecting climate control data, we mostly pulled [climate data and human vulnerability data] together.”

Samson had use of a supercomputer at McGill and was able to crunch the numbers in a matter of months. On a regular computer, the task would have taken years.   

Dominique Berteaux, professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of Quebec at Rimouski, was another co-author and co-supervisor of Samson’s research. As an expert on Quebec mammals, Berteaux became involved in Samson’s research early on, when he was mainly studying beavers.

“When he was studying beavers we worked together to study how climate change affected these creatures. Then [we] figured why not get involved in doing it for humans too,” Berteaux said.