The provincial government fined McGill more than $2 million last week in response to the university’s controversial tuition hike for its MBA program, which raised to tuition to $29,500 per year.

The massive increase in tuition—which had previously been $2,068 for Quebec students and $5,668 for students from other provinces—was announced last year as part of a shift to a self-funded model for the program, rather than one reliant on government funding.

McGill has argued that the move was essentially a necessity. Under the previous funding model, McGill received approximately $12,000 per year in revenue from tuition and government grants. The MBA program costs about $22,000 per student to run, forcing the university to subsidize the program with funds from other areas to the tune of $10,000 per student each year.

Other Canadians universities have taken similar steps in recent decades. Queen’s University switched their MBA program to a self-funded model in the 1990s, and the University of Western Ontario, the University of Toronto, and the University of British Columbia have done so as well.

Despite repeated warnings from Quebec’s former education minister, Michelle Courchesne, and the current minister, Line Beauchamp, Faculty of Management Dean Peter Todd said he had not expected the $2 million fine—the equivalent of a $10,993 penalty for each MBA student.

“We’re surprised, we’re disappointed, and we’re a bit puzzled,” Todd said.

Quebec City, however, has characterized McGill’s tuition hike as a unilateral violation of the rules governing university funding in the province. In a press release, Beauchamp said that “keeping universities on equal financial footing is crucial to making them accessible to all.”

“McGill’s decision violated current budgetary rules,” she said in the press release, “and a penalty will be applied until the situation is corrected.”  

Current students and alumni of the MBA program have expressed mixed feelings about the dramatic increases in tuition. Bob Dorrance, a 1977 MBA graduate who is currently the president and chairman of TD Securities, reminisced about the low tuition when he attended McGill.

“When I was in MBA, we used to pay $400 a year,” he said, “and in my second year, tuition actually decreased.”

But the increase, Dorrance said, is necessary now for McGill to compete on a global level. In a statement, Pat Tenneriello, the president of McGill’s MBA Student Association, echoed this sentiment.

“We as students believe that the increased costs are a necessary part of McGill’s efforts to make this program into one of the best of the world,” he said. “We oppose any actions taken that may hinder the university’s attempt to make this a reality.”

McGill’s efforts to improve the program may have paid dividends in at least one important measure. In its ranking of MBA programs this year, the Financial Times ranked McGill 57th in the world—a leap of 38 spots over its ranking last year. In addition, Canadian Business magazine recently reported that students entering McGill’s MBA program have the highest average GMAT scores of any university in Canada.

In the wake of the fine, McGill has no plans to re-examine its tuition model, Todd said.

“We are carrying on with our program,” he said. “We don’t have a choice but to operate this way if we want the program to thrive.

McGill, he said, has not yet determined how it will make up the $2 million gap in funding. The university remains in discussions with the province about the fine, however, and Todd has hopes for reaching an agreement.

“I do believe, despite the application of this fine, that the minister has left some doors open,” he said.

Additional reporting by Theo Meyer.

Students at Queen’s University are deciding whether or not their rector, Nick Day, should be impeached, after he wrote a public letter, signed with his position, to Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff praising the controversial campus event Israeli Apartheid Week.   

On March 7, Ignatieff issued a statement condemning Israeli Apartheid Week, which prompted Day’s response. Ignatieff’s statement called the event “an attack on the mutual respect that holds our society together” and “a dangerous cocktail of ignorance and intolerance.”

Day, who was elected as rector to represent undegraduate and graduate students, felt Ignatieff had misrepresented Israeli Apartheid Week.

“When Michael Ignatieff published his opinions on Israeli Apartheid Week, I published a letter on Rabble.ca sharing my thoughts on the issue,” Day said.

The three-page letter criticized Ignatieff for “ignorance” of the facts brought out by Israeli Apartheid Week. Day’s letter said it was wrong to condemn the week as anti-Semitic (as a line in Ignatieff’s statement had implied).

“If you were ignorant of these facts, I understand why you made the mistake you did in your statement. Now that you know, please rescind your statement and issue an apology or retraction,” Day said in his letter.

The last paragraph of Day’s letter that was the most problematic.

“I was elected to represent the approximately 20,000 students of Queen’s University,” he wrote. “If I ever used the influence of my office and the power of my public voice, as you have, to insulate from criticism the perpetrator of a mass-slaughter, I would have a very difficult time sleeping at night.”

He then signed the letter with his official title as rector of Queen’s University. Some students felt that Day abused his position to champion a personal cause. By signing the letter with his office and noting that he was a representative of Queen’s University students, Day spoke for a cause with which many students do not agree. As a result, the Queen’s Conservative, Liberal, and Israel on Campus groups circulated a petition calling for impeachment proceedings to begin against Day.

“Nick Day purported to represent all students at Queen’s in his actions, when in fact, his words hurt many and contributed to alienating many national and religious groups on campus,” said Dan Salvatore, a leader of the Queen’s University Conservative Association

Salvatore described Day’s actions as “unethical” and stated that the movement to impeach Day originated from “a strong consensus among Queen’s students and the Kingston community that his actions were unethical.” There isn’t however a consensus about what the duties of a rector shuld be.

“Some Queen’s students claim that a Queen’s Rector and student representative should not be allowed to engage in public political debates, while others have argued that it is the responsibility of a representative to do so,” said Day.

The petition circulated by various student groups aimed to bring Day’s impeachment to the entire student body for a vote. The petition gained well over twice the number of necessary signatures, and was approved by the Alma Mater Society, the Queen’s student government.Today and tomorrow students will vote on whether Day should be impeached. The Alma Mater Society will report the results to the University Council, which will use them to make a final decision.

The Queen’s University administration was unavailable for comment on this story, and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s media relations office told the Tribune that he had no comment on Day’s situation.

Holly Stewart

Principal Heather Munroe-Blum sat down with reporters from the McGill Daily, Le Délit, and the Tribune earlier this month to answer questions about the upcoming tuition hikes, the ratio of graduate students to undergraduates, and McGill’s Strategic Reframing Initiative.

In response to questions about provincial tuition increases, which the provincial government announced in its budget on Thursday, Munroe-Blum stressed the need to raise tuition fees to a level more similar with those in the rest of the country. In addition, she reiterated McGill’s commitment to dedicate 30 per cent of any new revenue from tuition to increasing student aid.

“My hope is that while I’m principal—and I’ve got a few years left as principal—that we would be able to say that every qualified student would be able to come to McGill, independent of their financial need,” she said.

Munroe-Blum has previously stated that she would like McGill to be able to compare itself to research-intensive public universities in the United States, such as the University of North Carolina.

In the interview, Munroe-Blum said that the student bodies of such universities typically have a slightly higher percentage of graduate students than McGill does—say, 70 per cent undergraduates and 30 per cent graduates, as compared to McGill, which is about 75 per cent undergraduate. She feels there is room to increase the number of graduate students at McGill in proportion to undergraduates.

“There are many things that would indicate that if we increase the graduate student proportion a little bit, the quality of undergraduate education will be better that it is today,” she said, citing possible benefits such as smaller class sizes.

Earlier this year, McGill’s administration also touted the role played by two senior members of McKinsey & Company, a prestigious international consulting firm, in carrying out the Strategic Reframing Initiative, an effort to improve many of the university’s administrative practices.

In recent weeks, however, McKinsey has found itself at the centre of a massive investigation by the American federal government into insider trading. In a March 9 article in the Financial Times, John Gapper wrote that “the scandal goes to the heart of McKinsey’s business model.”

Asked whether the accusations against McKinsey had given her pause about working with the company, Munroe-Blum downplayed the company’s role in the initiative.

“We’re not working with McKinsey,” she said. “We have a governor who is a senior person at McKinsey, who is an alumnus, and we have another alumnus. The two of them are pro bono giving us guidance.”

The company’s normal modus operandi, she said, involved a large team of McKinsey consultants coming in, doing evaluations, and making recommendations, which did not happen at McGill. She was following the investigation, she said, but was not concerned about its effect on the initiative.

“I don’t worry about it contaminating McGill at all,” she said.

Whether justified or not, Canada and Canadians have a reputation for their pleasant, kind demeanour. Syrup Trap, a recently launched website that aims to cover “news, gossip, sex, and scandal” at some of Canada’s top universities, will test whether the gossip blog format popular on some American campuses can thrive in this climate of congeniality.

The blog, which posted its first article on February 19, was started by Jamie, a University of British Columbia student who wishes to remain anonymous. While making his decision about which university he would attend, Jamie came across the gossip blog IvyGate, which provided the inspiration and model for Syrup Trap.

“I thought the same sort of concept of the website could work for Canadian universities,” he said. “I thought we needed a small dose of snark to lighten things up a bit.”

IvyGate was started in 2006 by Chris Beam and Nick Summers, both students at Columbia University at the time. (Beam is now a staff writer for Slate, while Summers is a senior writer for Newsweek and the Daily Beast.) Covering gossip and scandals at the eight Ivy League universities, the blog exploded in popularity when it broke the story of Yale student Aleksey Vayner’s ridiculous video resume.  

“There was enough tabloid-y stuff happening at the Ivy League schools that we thought we could start a blog and have fun with it,” Summers said. “It’s a crazy place that functions well as tabloid fodder.”

Since Canada has no group of branded universities comparable to Ivies, Jamie chose to focus on the six Canadian universities he felt would be the most likely to generate interesting and entertaining news: McGill, Queen’s, the University of Toronto, UBC, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Western Ontario.  

Both Summers and Peter Finocchiaro, one of IvyGate’s two current editors-in-chief, credited the site’s success in part to the emotions the mere mention of an Ivy League school invoke in many people, ranging from reverence to self-loathing. Jamie, for his part, said similar feelings of superiority can be found among students at the Canadian universities featured on Syrup Trap. And while there may be no official community of institutions similar to the Ivies, he hopes Syrup Trap will be able to at least foster a sense of one.

“I saw that we have this sort of small community of well-known institutions where students think rather highly of themselves,” he said. “A large part of what we were thinking as we were starting the blog, apart from the lack of engagement and school spirit deficit on Canadian universities, was this idea that there wasn’t anything that united us. We’re trying to build up a community, not exploit [an existing one].”

Some of IvyGate’s most popular and entertaining stories have evolved out of tips the editors received through their website, which their writers then research and develop into full stories. In the past these have included a story on a Yale student who dropped out of school to become part of Kanye West’s entourage, and one about a Princeton class president who was accused of setting fire to a squirrel. While Syrup Trap’s posts have so far focused primarily on aggregating stories already published in various campus newspapers, Jamie plans for the site to venture into investigative reporting as visitors to the site and tips from students increase.

According to Finocchiaro, it’s the quality of reporting and writing that provides the best formula for popularity.

“If you do it right you can capture the same sort of success in any collection of schools,” he said. “It just depends on having good content and good writing, and getting students at these schools to check in and see what’s going on, and really engaging them that way.”

Summers explained, however, that good writing has to be combined with the right kind of story.

“A lot of what makes IvyGate tick is just that awfulness, and the completely atrocious behaviour of the people who go to these schools,” he said. “My American’s understanding of Canada is that it’s a nicer place. I’m not sure that nice works on a blog.”

Jamie is optimistic, however, that Canadian students have the same propensity for scandal and that Syrup Trap will eventually reach a similar level of popularity as Ivy Gate.

“Our ultimate goal would be to be a semi-popular blog that people go to for a laugh,” he said. “This isn’t going to be a for-profit venture; We just want to become a small part of the university landscape.”

When a performance of his favourite Mozart concerto failed to hit the spot, McGill psychology Professor Daniel Levitin decided to find out why.

“I love the piece,” Levitin said. “He’s playing all the notes, but I found myself thinking, ‘Why is it that some recordings and performances move us to tears of joy, and others to tears of boredom?'”

Levitin’s most recent study explores how musical performances communicate emotional expression, examining when and why emotional responses vary. His results showed that differences in timing played a more important role than differences in volume.

According to Levitin, the author of the bestselling books This is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs, musical expression is largely communicated by the way the musician plays the notes. Levitin and his colleagues examined the way in which such variations served to communicate emotion by manipulating timing and amplitude in performances of classical piano pieces.  

But how exactly can an emotional response to a musical performance be measured?  

Using a disklavier, a specially modified piano keyboard with sensors beneath the keys. Levitin and his colleagues measured the precise and nuanced movements made by a concert pianist during his musical performance.

“We had a professional piano player from McGill’s Schulich School of Music come to the lab and play several pieces expressively,” said researcher Anna Tirovolas. “Then we systematically altered his performance to sound less expressive to see if people could hear the differences between them.”

Researcher Bianca Levy explained that participants listened to 30-second excerpts of these piano performances which varied in timing, loudness, and pedalling changes.  They then rated how emotional they thought these performances were on a scale ranging from “not at all emotional” to “very emotional.”

Variation in timing had a greater effect on the subject’s ratings than amplitude modulation.

Levy was surprised that the results didn’t follow an exact linear trend.  

“Participants were more sensitive to manipulations of timing and amplitude in the middle of the range than at the extremes,” she said.  

Tirovolas said that although musicians appeared to be more sensitive to the cues, musicians and non-musicians alike could perceive very subtle differences in expressivity. Non-musicians, Levitin said, were consistently able to recognize and choose the more expressive excerpts.  

“This tells us that even very subtle differences in performance are readily identified—even by average listeners,” he said. “I found that astonishing.”  

Levitin added that one of the hopes of this kind of research is that it will aid in understanding the alchemy of a moving performance.  

“It’s really a big step forward in capturing and quantifying why music is emotionally moving,” he said. 

Matt Essert

Dovid Katz, a world-renowned scholar of Yiddish and self-described “charismatic lunatic,” delivered a lecture in the Ferrier Building on March 14 called “Yiddish and Power.” In a room filled with mostly Jewish studies professors and elderly civilians, Katz explored how the development of the Yiddish language has been intertwined with various social, religious, and political disputes.

“There’s something strange-sounding about the combination of Yiddish and power, when Yiddish is seen as the embodiment of powerlessness,” Katz said.

Because Yiddish is among what Katz calls “stateless languages,” whose adherents have never held political power, a more abstract form of power developed—one that operates less through brute political or military force and more through influence and affecting the behaviour of others. Eastern European Jews, Katz said, through a high regard for cultural and intellectual achievement, wielded this second form of power as forcefully as their Westernized children do now.

When Yiddish first developed as a vernacular language about a thousand years ago, it formed only one leg of the East European Jewry’s trilingualism. According to Katz, power and prestige only belonged to those scholars in the community with knowledge of the other two languages—Hebrew and Aramaic. Part of the Jewish heritage, he said, is this deeply ingrained respect for scholarship, study, and the printed word.

“The heroes of the society were scholars instead of strongmen,” he said.

Another major theme of Katz’s talk was the relationship between the Yiddish language and various social, political, and religious movements that have seized the Jewish people in the last millennia. For instance, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, East European Jews were strongly attached to diverse revolutionary movements, such as anarchism and radical socialism.

“Those were the movements that, by the nature of things, took the language of the people and tried to raise it against the languages known only by the elitist rabbis against whom they had many taynes, many complaints, anyway,” Katz said.

Even today, Katz said, Yiddish—often considered a dead language—is enjoying a small resurgence among those non-Zionists who reject Hebrew as too tainted by its association with the modern state of Israel and all the crimes it has been accused of committing. Yiddish has a certain attraction for these young Jews because it was never the “language of conquerors.” This attractive powerlessness has brought back to Yiddish those with certain political ideas, such as non-Zionism and firm commitments to human rights and gay rights, in particular.

The other area of contemporary Jewish life in which Yiddish thrives is on the far right, with the ultra-Orthodox Chassidic Jews. The Chassids cling to the Yiddish language as the embodiment of the Eastern European tradition they fault the modern world for caring so little about.

Katz sees in this paradox the modern manifestation of the perpetual entanglement of Yiddish in communal disputes. “The political attachments of Yiddish do continue,” he said.

Katz was born in the “dull, boring, grey streets of Brooklyn” in 1956. That his father, Menke Katz, was a famous Yiddish poet meant that the language was an important part of Katz’s life from the beginning. He later studied at Columbia University and the University of London, before founding the Yiddish studies program at Oxford in the 1980s. Katz later founded and is still the director of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute in Lithuania, which offers an opportunity for people to study Yiddish in what was before the Holocaust the capital of Yiddish culture.

“Professor Katz is such a leading light,” says Eric Caplan, chair of the Jewish studies department at McGill. “To have someone of his stature come to McGill and to not have him talk would be a shame.”

Anna Gonshor, a McGill lecturer in Yiddish language and culture, who sponsored the talk, said she particularly admired Katz’s work as a scholar of “Judaism as a civilization.”

“It’s a complex, fascinating story that is still not known or appreciated in terms of the vitality of Jewish life and community existence and the development of Jewish intellectual life over the centuries,” she said.

In an interview after the talk, Katz emphasized that while he doesn’t try to persuade or coerce anyone into studying Yiddish, he thinks it important that there be resources available to a student who decides they want to.

“I think it’s natural and healthy for people to want to immerse themselves in their own past and their own heritage and their own family backgrounds and their own immediate ancestry,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything extreme, exotic, or far-fetched about it.”

On Wednesday, the English Montreal School Board Council of Commissioners held an information session regarding possible changes to Montreal schools.

Michael Cohen, a spokesman for the EMSB, said in an email to the Tribune that the main goal of these proposed changes is “consolidation of enrolment.”

Among the specific changes under consideration are the “development of multiple scenarios per cluster of schools,” addressing schools that have an enrollment  under 200, and reviewing elementary schools with two different French programs, “schools and centres that share one facility” and “specific project schools.”

All possible scenarios for major school changes will be voted on at a board meeting on March 30. In a press release, EMSB Director General Robert Stocker said “it is only at that regular board meeting on March 30 that Council will decide … which recommendations for major school change … shall be retained for public consultation.”

Only after decisions are made can schools respond formally, explained Cohen. The schools’ reaction to these changes is therefore unknown.

The public consultation process following the March 30 meeting will include governing boards, school and centre principles, the Central Parents’ Committee and municipal jurisdictions. Final decisions on the scenarios will be taken in January 2012, after having gone through public hearings in December 2011.

In the past 13 years, the EMSB has closed 15 schools. “Last year we did some French program changes. Three years ago we closed an elementary school in Montreal North and another in Point-Au-Trembles,” Cohen said.

Whichever recommendations are selected by the English Montreal School Board will be officially adopted in July 2012. Schools that may possibly be affected by these changes include James Lyng High, Royal Vale Elementary and High School, Marymount High, and Bancroft, among others. These schools could close, merge with another one, or move.

While the Wednesday meeting was an information session, EMSB chairman Angela Mancini stated that “the commissioners will have an opportunity, after being briefed on the contents of the documentation, to request via a formal board resolution that an evaluation of additional scenarios be performed by our administration.”

Quebec Minister of Finance Raymond Bachard released the province’s budget on Thursday, which included university tuition increases of $325 per year per student over the next five years, starting in the 2012-13 academic year.

“Without a doubt, accessibility will be an issue with these hikes,” said Students’ Society Vice-President External Myriam Zaidi.  

The tuition increases will not only affect Quebec-resident tuition. Out-of-province and international students who are in regulated programs such as the Faculty of Arts will also pay more.

“Their fees are calculated with Quebec fees as a base, and then there is a percentage which is added,” Zaidi said. She added that it is a common misconception that the hikes will only affect Quebec students.

“It’s going to make McGill the most expensive university [in Canada],” she said.

According to Zaidi, whether or not McGill will be able to get rid of their deficit depends on how the new revenues are allocated.

“The University of Toronto always has a deficit and they have higher tuition than we do. There may be some correlation but there is no causation,” Zaidi said. “It depends how the university prioritizes the money. Clearly McGill doesn’t prioritize student life, but rather research and infrastructure.”

Zaidi also argued that the current financial aid system, which gives students between $500 and $700 a month, is also inaccessible. But she added that McGill’s tuition hikes will not follow the usual pattern, in which the government diminishes its aid when fees are increased.

In the final weeks of her tenure, Zaidi’s priorities will be to inform as many students as possible on the effects of the hikes, and to lay the groundwork for next year’s students to mobilize against them.

“The government has already listened to students—it’s not impossible,” she said. “In 2005 we did succeed through the student strike in making the government go back on what they had planned.”

     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.

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.