McGill Tribune

1) Chose a group with an opt-outable funding system (these groups are usually “progressive”, e.g. QPIRG)

3)  Don’t provide any info about the organization (if you do, it must be misleading and/or exaggerating the “extremist” elements of the organization.)

By the time you read this, QPIRG McGill has already lost a big chunk of funding thanks to the misleading and manipulative campaign led by Conservative McGill and other groups. If you opted-out of QPIRG’s $3.75 per semester fee knowing what QPIRG does, then I can’t debate your decision (and your right to choose what student groups you fund). But if you didn’t know what QPIRG does, I invite you to visit the website (qpirgmcgill.org) so that next year you can make an informed decision.

The funny (or sad) thing about the QPIRG Opt-Out Campaign is that the same arguments they use could be used against them. Not everyone agrees with Conservative McGill’s activities or ideals. They don’t represent “most” McGillians, and they are still receiving funding from our student fees. And you know what, dear reader? We don’t have the option to opt-out from Conservative McGill. If QPIRG is on the “extreme left” (according to Conservative McGill), then it would be logical to assume that they are on the “extreme right.” Both groups are equally non-representative of the student body.

Conservative McGill is not alone. Last week’s front cover of the Tribune showed a photo with the instructions of how to opt-out from QPIRG, not a very neutral action from an “objective” paper during such a sensitive “campaign.” But wait! The Tribune is known to be the conservative paper on campus, my bad! On that same issue, the article reporting on the “altercations” between the QPIRG Opt-Out Campaign and QPIRG members and allies was not accurate. I was there: Students were never obstructed from accessing Opt-Out’s table and the only thing we did was to talk, one-on-one, with the people that had received a flyer from them—we were not giving flyers. The article doesn’t mention the intimidation we received from McGill Security, but that’s another story.

This is not a matter of money or ideology, but a matter of the diversity of voices at our university. Even though I don’t agree with conservative ideals, I’m glad they’re around. As Voltaire reportedly said: “I might not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Sadly, Conservative McGill doesn’t think the same way.

Congratulations, Conservative McGill: your campaign successfully provided a false image of QPIRG, inciting students to opt-out en masse. You have provided an excellent case study in manipulative campaigning. I also congratulate the people that opted-out without knowing what our organization does: your ignorance has debilitated QPIRG, a very creative and active student organization on campus. I don’t know how saving $3.75 per term alone will make up for the lost conferences, student-research projects (some with stipends), Rad Frosh, movie screenings, urban gardening, environmentalist events, and so on.

Christian Scott Martone is a U3 Sociology and IDS student, [email protected].

“How am I going to celebrate? I’m going to spank some ass.” -Terri Jean-Bradford

Terri has a lot to celebrate. She is a dominatrix, and last week the Ontario Superior Court of Justice struck down three provisions of the Criminal Code related to the operation of a “bawdy house” (a brothel), “living on the avails of prostitution,” and “communicating for the purposes of the trade.”

Personally, I find the sex industry disgusting; my principles scream against it. The purpose of prostitution is to turn a woman (or man) into a sexual object: a thing to be used like a common toy. It turns an intimate act into a cheap one. No one involved in the sex industry is free from this taint. The pimps and bawdy house landlords are profiting from it. While some prostitutes are subjecting themselves to it, far too many of them are doing so to pay for drugs, or because they were forced into it. As for the so-called “johns” who solicit, many of whom have wives and kids at home, they are buying sexual gratification at the expense of another human life.

Legally, however, prostitution can be a victimless crime. Between two consenting adults, sex can sometimes be sold without serious harm. I’m comfortable with the ruling on bawdy houses—the more this industry can be removed from streets, the better. Prostitution won’t go away—it’s called the world’s oldest career for a reason. Let’s give it a legal space, controlled by the prostitutes themselves, where it can occur safely.

I am also comfortable striking down the section regarding “living on the avails of prostitution.” It will allow prostitutes to hire bodyguards, and this is also a positive outcome.

However, removing the section on “communicating for the purposes of the trade” is a slap in the face to every community with a sex industry problem. To allow prostitutes to wander the streets and sell sex as openly as they please will do nothing but harm public space. I don’t want our families to wander downtown knowing that others are legally permitted to sell sex there. I especially don’t want anyone’s children to have to do that. If prostitutes want to work, they should have to do it privately, not in a public space where we all have to live.

The ruling raises serious policy questions. If brothels are allowed to operate they need to be regulated and zoned. They cannot exist in any suburb or downtown neighbourhood, that would be unfair to those communities. The industry will need to be constrained to small areas and kept separate from residential or commercial centres.

Additionally, we need to find a way to deal with the huge problem posed by human trafficking in the sex industry. Any brothel owner hosting trafficked prostitutes should face the same 14-year sentence faced by those who prostitute minors. If the questions surrounding human trafficking are not answered, legalized prostitution isn’t an experiment we should be undertaking. Canada also needs study whether the violence endemic to prostitution will be lessened by these changes or if they will only worsen.

In the end, our courts should not be answering these questions. The House of Commons should strike a royal commission on the topic so we can formulate a solution to prostitution’s many vices, legal or otherwise.

When it comes to diversity in politics, Canada has a long way to go.

This is true even compared to the United States. Only one woman has ever been elected as a premier in Canada, and we’ve had only one female prime minister. The U.S., on the other hand, currently has eight female state governors, and 22 states have had female governors. When it comes to representation by immigrants and visible minorities, Canada falls even further behind. The U.S. has one governor of South Asian descent, a Latino governor, and, of course, an African-American president. Comparably, Canada’s ministers are almost uniformly white males. The two most notable Canadian female political figures, Adrienne Clarkson and Michaelle Jean, were both Governor-General, a largely symbolic role. Despite a relatively liberal immigration policy and more female births than male, Canada’s political institutions remain overwhelmingly comprised of males of European descent.

Not surprisingly, this can negatively affect how confident women are in their own abilities. As I found out in my political science class last week, even though women now excel in many “male” fields, they tend to feel less confident, often negating their own skills and expertise. I was struck by this paradox: women have advanced their careers, achieved political milestones like equal pay, voting rights, and acceptance to previously barred fields. Yet even as women become more capable and more confident, they are rarely as confident as men.

It seems that this research hits close to home at McGill. I haven’t had the opportunity to conduct a study to determine if women and men are equally secure in their abilities as students and educators, but there is a clear discrepancy between the two in higher-level positions. For instance, out of 13 student senators on the university senate, only four are women. How can we expect women to feel equally confident when there are so few apparent examples of female achievement? Luckily, there are efforts to overcome obstacles to female political involvement. McGill’s Women in House is a great program that encourages women to get involved in politics. It offers female students a trip to Ottawa to hear politicians speak and to shadow an MP. Through this program, McGill encourages its young women to develop their interests and achieve the expertise necessary to give them confidence in their own abilities. It’s time we spend more on programs that encourage political engagement from all backgrounds and introduce new voices to the student body.

Canada prides itself on being a multicultural, inclusive, and tolerant society. But the leaders of our political parties are far from diverse or multicultural, especially when compared to the leaders in American politics. Canada is proud to be a country where political representation does not depend on money or image, as it often does in the U.S., but it too often seems to depend on something else entirely: irrelevent biographical details like gender or ethnicity. It’s time we see more female faces representing our diverse society.

I don’t care about the Architecture Café. Maybe I’m a traitor and you hate me and I’m completely wrong, but at least I’m honest. All the protesting and rallies meant little to me even after I found out the café was the only student-run food spot on campus. I understand that the message goes deeper than “We want a place to buy coffee,” but whatever that message is was drowned out by the ever present “Save the Arch Caf” theme on fliers and posters scattered around the campus. Fiery words like “McGill students against administrative silence” would have been more poignant. Can you imagine that slogan blazing red and glorious, splashed across giant banners, marched through the main gates and right up to the front of Leacock?

To me, the Architecture Café never felt like something that was run by students. It felt like just another place on campus where you couldn’t use debit or credit and that rejected meal plan cards, much like all the restaurants on the second floor of the Shatner Building. In fact, any of those places could easily have been moved to where the Architecture Café was and I would have barely noticed. I find it hard to be sympathetic to the cause because if students want a place where they can get food from a student-run business, they should try their own kitchens. I hear that’s got some good stuff!

Maybe I’m just bitter. Maybe I’m a hater and a jerk and have no compassion for the efforts of my fellow students and friends. I never have cash and don’t like coffee and the one time I got food there the Jamaican patty was cold. But I don’t want to belittle the efforts of my fellow McGill students. I am in awe of their passion, determination, and knowledge of the situation.

However, most people see the campaign to save the café as simply an attempt to save a café,  and one that many of them probably didn’t—and still don’t—even know the location of. The closure is being used as a screen on which students can project any other problems they may have with the administration. The café became an all-important cause only when it became a popular cause.

In the end, the entire thing is about money. McGill won’t release the financial figures. They didn’t take students’ ideas into consideration. They simply disregarded what the students tried to do. It was learning about the background behind the struggl that appalled me, not the actual café closure. If more attention had been given to the secretive way in which the administration handled things, I believe more students would have vocalized their support.

If this truly is the end of the Architecture Café, it will be a martyr in the continuing struggle between students and administration when it comes to food services at McGill: a battle that has raged since at least my first year at McGill. Fare thee well, Architecture Café. May your sacrifice show the administration that students actually do care, and are smarter than the administration would prefer to think. And what could possibly scare them more?