Matt Essert

After years of incomplete financial statements from the Arts Undergraduate Society, the McGill administration has informed the group it will not release the student fees collected for them this semester until the required documentation is submitted. Although the university was scheduled to release the cheque by today, as of last night the situation was at an impasse, with the AUS unable to provide the requested documentation and the Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson’s office unwilling to renegotiate the matter.

The fees, which are collected from all Arts students by the university on standard e-bills, make up the bulk of the AUS’s operating funds. Receipt of these funds each semester, however, as stipulated in the AUS and McGill’s Memorandum of Agreement, is contingent on the AUS’ submission of a full financial audit, which has not happened in the three fiscal years since 2007. While the AUS has submitted documentation for the first two years, it has not for 2009-2010

“We haven’t gotten the information, we haven’t gotten the financials, and the auditor of the university is telling us it’s inappropriate for us to be handing out the money to a group that hasn’t fulfilled their responsibility,” Mendelson said.

According to AUS President David Marshall, each semester since the group first failed to submit an audit, the president of the AUS or their auditor sent a letter to the deputy provost’s office explaining that an audit would soon be forthcoming and the administration released the fees. This semester, however, the administration has informed Marshall it will not release the fees until certain financial documentation from the 2009-2010 fiscal year is submitted.

“We had a written agreement from the previous president and VP Finance of the AUS agreeing to provide the information we were missing. That didn’t work. We had another commitment by the AUS this year, which is why we released the Fall cheque,” said Mendelson. “There are just so many times this can happen … once bitten, twice shy.”

Marshall said that despite his best efforts, those of the rest of the executive, and those of the group’s new accounting firm RSMRichter, the AUS does not have enough documentation to meet the university’s deadline. Although RSMRichter submitted a letter to the administration on December 21, 2010, explaining the situation and assuring them that the AUS’s newly implemented financial practices would allow them to complete full audits from this point forward, Marshall received a letter from Mendelson on January 21 explaining that without the requested information, they would still not be able to release the AUS’s cheque this semester.

“There was nothing in our history that would have suggested that this year, of all years, when we’re trying to rectify not only the immediate financial issues but all of the historical reasons behind the issues we’ve had, the university should come around and say ‘OK, we’re going to cut you off,'” Marshall said.

Without these funds, Marshall said the AUS will have to make some drastic cuts to the services it provides. The first affected, he said, would likely be the Arts Student Employment Fund, which contributes to the salaries of student researchers. Events like Bar des Arts would also lose funds. In addition, Marshall expressed concern about being able to pay for the services of RSMRichter, the accounting firm that has been working with the group since the Fall to help them set up sound business practices.

Since they are volunteer-run, services like peer tutoring and the essay centre will continue normal operations. The Arts Computer Labs will be unaffected, because they are administered by a separate fund. Marshall is confident that the Society’s St.Patrick’s Day events and Red and White Ball will happen, but he said that the executives have already begun putting some AUS expenses on their personal credit cards in anticipation of being repaid later.

Mendelson also said the AUS is not the first undergraduate society to have issues with its audits.

“We’ve had certain problems with other associations where the proper records aren’t kept. There isn’t the responsible accounting that I assume students want and certainly that students deserve,” he said.

Management Undergraduate Society President Céline Junke said the MUS had submitted documents late before. According to Engineering Students’ Society President Daniel Keresteci, his organization faced a similar situation a few years ago, when they hadn’t filed their audits for a number of years. Now, however, the group has sound accounting practices in place, he said.

“McGill hounds us for our audit, but they know the relationship we have where we use the same firm every year,” Keresetci said. “So we just tell them that we’re waiting from our auditing firm and they’re like “OK” and when it comes in I sign it and we send it over to McGill for approval.”

Mendelson added that discussions with the AUS are ongoing.

“Right now we’re in a conversation with the AUS trying to find out what kind of information they can indeed supply, and we’re waiting to hear from them,” he said.

According to Marshall, it is not yet clear what will happen to the funds if they are not released to the AUS on Tuesday. He is hopeful, however, that the administration will be willing to negotiate.

Additional reporting by Matt Essert.

Nearly a fortnight after the Students’ Society Council issued a public censure of President Zach Newburgh for his involvement with Jobbook.com, a social networking website designed to connect students at elite universities with employers, new details have emerged about the efforts by several councillors to remove Newburgh from office.

Certain councillors first learned of Newburgh’s involvement with Jobbook on February 2, according to a councillor present at the meeting. Three members of the Executive Committee—Vice-President University Affairs Joshua Abaki, VP Clubs and Services Anushay Khan, and VP External Myriam Zaidi—met with them to discuss a motion to remove Newburgh from office. Abaki led the effort, the councillor said.

At the Council meeting the following day, eight councillors—the minimum number required to begin impeachment proceedings—voted in confidential session to impeach Newburgh: Clubs & Services Representative Maggie Knight, Music Representative Katie Larson, Senator Tyler Lawson, Arts Representative Kallee Lins, and Senator Amara Possian, in addition to the three executives with whom councillors had met the night before.

But not all the councillors who voted to impeach Newburgh necessarily wanted to remove him from office, the anonymous councillor said.

“Most of us just wanted to talk about it,” the councillor said.

Councillors never actually voted on whether or not to remove Newburgh from office. By the time the motion came up for a vote, it had been amended to censure Newburgh instead, with Education Representative Kady Paterson substituting her name for Possian’s. Seventeen councillors voted in favour of the censure in confidential session, with six opposed and one—Newburgh—abstaining.

According to interviews with councillors and executives, the Executive Committee has made an effort move forward with business, with one exception—Joshua Abaki.

In an article published online on February 7, the Chronicle of Higher Education quoted an email message to the publication in which Abaki said that Newburgh had “lost the moral authority” to lead SSMU.

“It is further troubling,” Abaki told the Chronicle, “that he is more concerned about Jobbook’s prospects than amid all this rather than the great harm he has done to [SSMU].”

In addition, Abaki refused to stand at the front of the room with the rest of the Executive Committee during the SSMU General Assembly on Thursday while they present their Executive reports.

“It’s clear that Josh and Zach are still not getting along,” Maggie Knight said.

Abaki and Newburgh are required to work closely together in dealing with the McGill administration, including the current negotiations to renew SSMU’s lease on the Shatner Building and its Memorandum of Agreement with McGill.

The two are scheduled to meet with Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson on Tuesday—their first such meeting since the censure. Newburgh declined to comment on his relationship with Abaki for this article and Abaki was unavailable at press time.

Other members of the Executive Committee, however, have made greater efforts to patch things up in the past week.

“I think things are relatively amiable,” VP Internal Tom Fabian said. “But there is a wound to be healed.”

SSMU Council is scheduled to meet again for the first time since the censure on Thursday, but it is unclear whether Newburgh’s dealings with Jobbook will come up again.

“There are councillors who would like to see Zach removed from office,” said Clubs & Services Representative Max Zidel, but added that he didn’t think councillors would bring forward another motion to impeach him without a request from students.

Such a request could come on Thursday in the form of a student-initiated referendum question, which would require the signatures of 200 undergraduates. Despite rumours that such a petition was being prepared, Knight and other councillors said they had seen no solid evidence that one would be brought to Council on Thursday.

According to Speaker of Council Cathal Rooney-Cespedes, however, it is unclear whether a such a move to remove Newburgh would be allowed, as Council has already tried Newburgh for his involvement with Jobbook.

“There might be some ambiguity,” he said, “because you’re talking about trying someone for the second time based on the same accusation, and there are laws that prohibit that.”

Despite the lack of support for another impeachment motion, several councillors have said that a formal apology and the release of more information—what Knight called “an act of good faith”—might help Council move forward with new business.

“I think the issue needs to be cleared up, personally, to prove or disprove what’s been said in the media,” Kallee Lins said.

Sophie Silkes

On January 31, over 180 students, faculty, and community members attended a talk on local food system politics, delivered by Jon Steinman, broadcaster and host of the Nelson-based, internationally broadcast radio show “Deconstructing Dinner.”

Oliver de Volpi, McGill’s executive chef, introduced Steinman and provided the crowd with mostly locally grown snacks sourced from the Macdonald Campus Farm.  

Steinman, a Nelson, B.C., resident and avid proponent of the local-food movement, spent the first half of his talk emphasizing the risks inherent in supporting industrialized, large-scale agriculture.  

“We have very little choice but to invest in the industrial food system,” he said. “Is this investment secure? When we deconstruct it, the short answer is ‘No.'”

Steinman highlighted the six “food security concerns” which  he argued should be at the forefront of our consumer awareness. He emphasized his third point, “corporate concentration,” as the most critical for our understanding. Steinman cited Cargill—which, according to their website, is an “international producer and marketer of food, agricultural, financial, and industrial products and services”—as an example of how monopolized and vertically integrated contemporary food systems have become.

Cargill controls 40 per cent of slaughter capacity and 17 per cent of all grain in Canada, and also holds large stakes in the canola oil, corn, sugar, ginger ale, and ice cream markets. Cargill is also one of Canada’s largest producers of plant fertilizer, natural gas, salt, and corn plastics.

Steinman built off the example of Cargill to issue his plea for awareness of the possible perils of submitting to large-scale food systems and a call for widespread, holistic interaction between the consumers and their food.

According to Steinman, the fatal flaw of food production today amounts to the fact that “there’s a lot of money in the food system. It’s just not ending up in the pockets of the farmers.”  

After spending half of his talk discussing the current way in which consumers are inadvertently perpetuating the poor conditions of mass food production, Steinman described viable alternatives to supporting industrialized agriculture.  

“We live in a food system today that is quite a monoculture,” he said, urging listeners to cultivate external food systems through community shared agricultures and community cooperatives.

“We’re talking about trying to shift from one [food system] that is deeply rooted to one that is outside of the box,” he said.

The event, co-sponsored by McGill Food and Dining Services and the McGill Office of Sustainability also functioned as an official and public introduction to MFDS’s new sustainability strategy.  

“The talk was a wonderful forum for people from UQAM, UdeM and Concordia, as well as for outside groups—Ailments d’Ici, the Montreal Permaculture Guild—who were at the talk as well,” said Sarah Archibald, a U2 student and a coordinator for the Food Systems Project.

For the third portion of the gathering, audience members heard from Jonathan Glencross, the U3  architect behind the $2.4 million endowed Sustainability Projects Fund and one of the founders of the McGill Food Systems project, Laura Rhodes, the McGill’s Food Systems administrator, and Lilith Wyatt, the Sustainability Projects coordinator.  

Rhodes unveiled MFDS’s strategic action plan towards sustainable food purchasing.  

“How can a commitment to sustainable food systems at McGill create and support a culture of sustainability at the university?” Rhodes asked the crowd.

Rhodes presented a cohesive business model that involves applied student research in the creation of long lasting partnerships with local farms and suppliers who would supply dining locations on campus while keeping the McGill community informed  about the sustainability of its own food systems.

“If the end result is a system that students and professors are excited to study, staff and administrators are enthusiastic to run, and all campus members are proud to eat from, then we have succeeded in creating a culture of sustainability at McGill,” Glencross said.

Robert Smith

The first annual Faculty of Arts Undergraduate Research Event brought together bright minds from different departments on Wednesday to showcase some of the research done by undergraduates in the past year.

Using various multimedia, students were asked to creatively present their research in a series of five-minute presentations. Every department in the faculty was represented at the event.

According to Dean of Arts Christopher Manfredi, the event was part of a coalition that “consists of four partners: the Faculty of Arts, the Arts Internship Office, the Provost Office, and the individual professors who provide the research opportunities.”

Aside from providing a platform to showcase research, the Arts Undergraduate Research Internship Awards also provide funding through grants with the hope of fostering research as part of the academic experience.  

“[Research] is going on, but we haven’t done a nice job showcasing it,” said Associate Dean of Arts Suzanne Morton, a history professor and one of the event’s organizers. “Science already does it; the tradition of working in a lab is stronger than in Arts, where it is more individualistic.”

At its core, “research is really simple — all you need is a good idea and you try to work it out,” said Dirk Schlimm, a McGill philosophy professor.

Schlimm laid down his take on the steps to effective research.  

“Getting an idea is also easy,” he said. “Just fill your mind with stuff and ideas will eventually pop out. Recognizing a good idea is hard; you need experience and professors will usually fill this role. Finally, working an idea out is harder, as it requires motivation, time, stamina, and knowledge of where to go with it.”

It appears as though the undergraduate researchers listened to Schlimm’s advice, and, according to some, the results were hugely successful.  

“It blows me away how smart and articulate our students are,” Morton said. “The professors are just gushing.”

One of the student researchers was Karine Fonda, U1 Honours international development studies, who did her research on the “Health Insurance Access Database,” which examined health policies in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries for different population groups.

Fonda described her research as both challenging and rewarding.  

“There is a lot of reading and selecting the right information, answering questions and asking more questions and trying to present everything in a coherent manner,” she said. “At the same time, I can apply some of my academic background. It improved my research experience as well as helped me explore other areas such as law and translations. For once, I can dive deep into the topic and I can see a pattern developing in a country.”  

For professors, much of the learning and co-operation is mutual.  

“We have excellent mutual relationship,” Schlimm said. “McGill undergrads are very motivated with diverse interests and we learn from each other’s original ideas.”

Research can also help students find where their interests lie.  

“It gives opportunity to test the field—only by doing it will you say, ‘This is really what I want to do’ or not,” Schlimm said.

This is especially relevant for undergraduate students who are still finding their passions. As part of his research study, Siddharth Mishra, U1 Honours economics, who is also majoring in international development studies, plans to travel to India this summer to examine its legal system.

 “Development is something I am interested in. It is a way to follow my interests,” Mishra said. “It will be an interesting experience and summer.”

 “Research lets you do what you love while getting paid for it,” he added.

  The protests that have engulfed Egypt came to McGill’s downtown campus on Monday in the form of a midday demonstration by Amnesty International. While this is the first physical manifestation of the turmoil at McGill, the issue has been worrying for many students since protests first began nearly two weeks ago.  

“The trigger has been some kind of dissatisfaction with the economy,” said Imad Mansour, a McGill political science professor, about the source of the unrest in Egypt. He was quick to add, however, that despite the claims of many news reports, the protests are about more than the price of bread.

“Part of the frustration is with the whole package of policies … the lack of representation, the lack of transparency, corruption, inefficiency, economic decline,” he said.

The policies are those of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power for over 30 years. Under Mubarak, Mansour said, Egypt has been wracked by corruption and inefficiency—”a case of bureaucracy gone wild.”

While these issues may have pushed protesters to take to the streets in Egypt, many blame Mubarak directly and see his immediate expulsion from the country as the only way to solve its problems.

“We’re standing here every day until Mubarak leaves; we’ve been standing here every day since [January 25],” said Mohamed Zoeid, a protester outside the Egyptian Consulate on de la Gauchetiere Street in Montreal. “We don’t trust this guy—he’s been fooling us for 30 years. Enough is enough.”

Many government officials in the U.S. and Canada have issued statements condemning the violence and calling for Mubarak’s resignation, political change, or both.   

Inside the consulate, the Consul General of Egypt, Amin Meleika, said the protestors were a strong political force who had had a clear effect on the government.   

“Now that the state has accepted all demands [of the protesters], it wants to use the next six to seven months to organize the transition, so as not to leave a power vacuum,” he said.

Meleika said he was “optimistic” about the safety of Egyptian McGill students and their families, and that “things are getting better and quieter.”

“The demonstrations, except for a few incidents … have been rather peaceful,” he said. “I’m optimistic because I see there is a movement in the right direction.”

In defence of Mubarak, Meleika said the president had deployed the Army only for the safety of his citizens, not to inhibit demonstrations.  

On whether Mubarak will attempt to play a strong role in Egypt after he steps down next September, Meleika speculated that “the President has made a very clear commitment that he is not running again … and that he himself would just like to end his term and set the transition.”  

Meleika further defended Mubarak’s domestic policy, foreign policy, and sensitivity to his constituency.  

“I think definitely he will be remembered in a positive sense,” Meleika said.

Justin Trudeau, MP for Montreal’s Papineau riding, synthesized the views and concerns of both protesters and the government.  

“We’re beginning to see movements throughout the Middle East … that are saying, ‘Enough is enough, enough of these hierarchical regimes,'” he said. “[But] at the same time, I want to caution against being naive.”  

The installation of an extremist or authoritarian regime after Mubarak wouldn’t be much of an improvement, Trudeau continued.

“It’s going to take a while, and Canada should be playing ball in promoting that type of openness and stability that would lead to [a democracy],” he said.  

“We hope to draw attention to the fact that the freedom to assembly and expression is an inalienable right,” said Amir Nijhawan, the organizer of yesterday’s Amnesty International protest and a McGill political science student. “The protests [in Egypt] originated out of dissatisfaction with the political system, rooted in corruption and abuse. In the interests of protecting and promoting rights, the voice of the Egyptian people must be represented.”