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Paint me a pixel

by Madison McLauchlan on

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Imagine intelligence is artificial 

It begins as an idea. A flicker of colour, of motion, a feeling that you want to convey. There are so many mediums to choose from—charcoal, clay, oil, acrylic? Pencil, paintbrush, camera, hands? In a frenzy, you make the decision and set to work. It’s torturous, amazing, and gut-wrenching all at once. You hate the final product. The next day, you love it. And if you choose to show it to the world, you relinquish control, and you can only hope that it will mean something. 

This process of artistic creation was on my mind when I was recently fiddling with DALL-E, an artificial intelligence text-to-image generator. And it’s on the minds of many: Those who care about the sanctity of human creativity, those who are concerned with the rapidly evolving capabilities of artificial intelligence, and those who spend too much time on Discord. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are intimidating concepts. These terms are so entrenched in the public consciousness and social media, well beyond the tech world, that it feels embarrassing to ask the most basic of questions. 

AI is a branch of computer science that aims to help machines solve problems that are typically only solvable by the human mind. A variety of techniques, like machine learning, help accomplish this task: Machine learning involves training an algorithm to make decisions or predictions based on large data sets. The more data it is trained on, the more accurate its prediction will be. Machine learning has helped power accessible services like Google Translate and convenient ones like Netflix recommendation algorithms. When presented with astonishing advances in this technology, it bears reminding that AI is not inherently good nor bad, but instead a neutral tool. Look only to the world of chess for examples of its dual nature: IBM’s Deep Blue chess bot showed that human grandmasters could be outplayed; but this summer, an AI-programmed robot broke a seven-year-old’s finger during a chess tournament in Moscow. 

As for AI text-to-image generators, their sinister nature is a little less clear-cut. Several open-source, free services have popped up this year; names like DALL-E and Midjourney especially ruled Twitter timelines for a few weeks, garnering a John Oliver segment. Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and Google’s version, Imagen, exemplify a new wave of open-source, soon-to-launch programs capable of visually manifesting almost anything you can think of: Put in a line of text, as specific, as outlandish as you wish, and the algorithm will sift through thousands of data derived from images online to produce an original result as close to the prompt as possible. Prompts like “R2D2 getting baptized” or “Nosferatu on Rupaul’s Drag Race” demonstrate just how absurd the images can get. The idea is incredible. But is it art? And if so, what purpose does it serve? 

AI has been marketed to the public as progressive and impressive by virtue of its ability to mimic human decision-making. Sun Ha Hong, an assistant professor who teaches about the implications of algorithms on society at Simon Fraser University, rejects that narrative. 

“One of the greatest myths about AI is that, because we are told these technologies are so cutting edge and amazing, we tend to assume that every piece of it is cutting edge, world-class, and really well thought out,” Hong told me. “There are a few world-class, well-thought-out elements that are then held together with several metres of duct tape from the 1970s.”

Contrary to how many AI companies would have it appear, these generators do not possess anything close to human intelligence. When I spoke to Helen Hayes, a PhD candidate in McGill’s Department of Art History and Communication, she told me that, based on what these AI art generators actually do, “artificial intelligence” is in many ways a “misnomer.” Open-source AI art generators benefit greatly from the term’s cultural zeitgeist because users are lured in by the power of infinite possibility.

“The use of the term [AI] has so much social capital, so much financial capital, that it doesn’t actually matter if people know what’s going on behind that smokescreen,” Hayes said. “You can call DALL·E like, ‘the scraping of a dataset to produce a digital file that’s […] visually representative of the text that you’ve entered.’ But no one’s gonna use it.”  

For start-ups, the buzzword carries the promise of technological utopianism that puts companies at a disadvantage if they are not using AI in some way. In some cases, tech firms will even pretend to use AI to attract corporate interest and clients, while humans are really doing the work of the “bot.” 

All the while, we humans should beware of attributing “intelligence” to any non-sentient machine. “Remember, AI has no idea what it is saying,” Hong reminded me. “It has no idea what art is, it has no idea what it faces. It has no idea what science is. It’s a monkey on a typewriter that’s just copying and pasting things.” 

The flimsiest aspect of art-generating algorithms is what they were trained on—or rather, what they weren’t. Companies like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion will tell you that their AI image generators can create anything within the limitless bounds of imagination. Time, labour, and expertise limit hand-made visual art. But the inputs of text and the set of images the algorithm was trained on are what limit algorithmically-generated outputs. 

“If the AI systems are trained using a specific set of data, that data, which usually isn’t like cleaned in a specific way to account for varying perspectives […] includes a lot of what we call ‘awful but lawful’ data,” Hayes said. 

Everything that is problematic about the internet, then—racism, misogyny, ableism, etc.— may be reproduced through algorithms trained on scraped image data that is not carefully filtered.

“They’re not going through a representative sample of all the art created by anyone across the world, they’re scraping a bunch of things off the very surface of often the English American internet,” Hong explained.

If so, how could an algorithm fed only a small sliver of human creativity produce anything truly original? 

/imagine/ The future of art 

Before AI, the creativity inherent to artistic pursuits was infallible. So I reached out to a veteran artist to see what he thought about this newfangled technology. Back when McGill still offered courses in the Fine Arts, internationally acclaimed artist and architect Charles Gurd was an undergraduate studying psychology and still figuring out his career path. With a wealth of experience in multimedia, he sees digitally rendered, AI-generated art not as a threat to the industry, necessarily, but rather as a site of contemplation of the form. 

At the basis of artistic expression, he says, is a “transmission of energy—way beyond the ‘concerns’ of the intellect—that operates on a level of unity of all things.” I understand what he means. Sometimes, writing electrifies me, as though a live wire keeps my fingers moving until I’ve transformed the inspiration into a sentence. 

“So, as an artist, you have to go to that place and thereby become capable […] of reaching viewers,” Gurd wrote to me. “[A]rt is this communication that everyone experiences in [a] common way [….] Art usually involves mystery/magic/surprise/chaos which is the basis of it all—life.”

In our email chain, Gurd looped in Gwendolyn Owens, director of visual arts at the McGill Library and Archives, who looked to the evolution of art forms throughout history.

“In the 20th century, we saw the advent of happenings and performances, readymades, and so much more.  To some people, these advances were not art,” Owens wrote. “My view is that every artist can decide what they want to use (or not use) and every critic and collector can make their own decision as well. AI will not be the last change, there will be more. The debates are what make the world of art vibrant.”

I took Owens’s words as an opportunity to explore what AI-generated art had to offer, telling myself all the while that I could mark the pages of art history. But figuring out how to use these flawed platforms to your advantage is more complex than it appears. 

I started imagining prompts to complement articles in the Tribune, with mixed results (successful examples shown here). Legality presented the first hurdle: I quickly learned that Midjourney creations for commercial use would cost $10 USD per month, with a maximum of around 200 generated images. Then there was the task of finding the right words. I was impressed and chastised by other users’ incredible aptitude for getting the AI to produce truly amazing images; prompts would be 25 lines long and include dozens of terms like “hyperrealistic,” “4k pixel,” “octane render”. They knew every trick in the book, while I was sitting there struggling to generate an image of a cat that didn’t resemble a misshapen badger. 

Many users, like Sarah Tornai, have actually put the time and effort into learning the best techniques associated with prompt-making, even within a platform structured around data inequities.

“I feel like I’ve landed in a different dimension. Honestly having a slightly hard time wrapping my mind around all of this being real,” Tornai, who goes by MoyoMoz, wrote in a public post on the Midjourney server. “Been using [Midjourney] for about a week or two and I feel like someone just gave me access to a deep dream/desire I’ve always had but never knew was possible.” 

The post triggered hundreds of community reactions, most of which were overwhelmingly positive. When I spoke to her about her experience using Midjourney to create portraits and landscapes of her home country of Mozambique, she described both wonder and frustration. 

“Midjourney has opened up a world of creative possibilities to me that feel personally revolutionary,” Tornai wrote to me. “I’ve been working on images about Mozambique, which is an incredibly resource-rich and culturally rich county, but one of the “poorest” countries in the world economically because of the effects of colonization, historic racism[,] and past wars.”

 “I’ve noticed that because AI is pulling images from the web[,] the images it generates of Mozambican people or houses [are] highly skewed towards very deep poverty even though a Mozambican middle class and upper class does exist. I’ve decided to incorporate that into my art because it’s actually part of the story I want to tell.” 

Google’s Imagen site states that “[T]he data requirements of text-to-image models have led researchers to rely heavily on large, mostly uncurated, web-scraped datasets. While this approach has enabled rapid algorithmic advances in recent years, datasets of this nature often reflect social stereotypes, oppressive viewpoints, and derogatory, or otherwise harmful, associations to marginalized identity groups.” This disclaimer explains why they haven’t yet released Imagen for public use, but it does not excuse other platforms’ decisions to develop algorithms using any data that they can find for free. 

The advent of text-prompt-generated artwork subverts the traditional one-way relationship between an artist and their creation. The user is responsible for the text prompt, the algorithm is responsible for turning this input into an output, and the developer is responsible for feeding the output possibilities to the algorithm. In the Tribune’s publications of AI art, I referred to both myself—the artist— and Midjourney AI—the tool—as the source of each image. But really, who is the artist? Is it the person who imagines the text prompt, in the unique string of words that only they have, the intermediary algorithm, or the person who coded the machine and made all of this possible? And more importantly, who is responsible when the generated product is harmful?

/imagine/ Something beautiful, turned for profit

One story that has been morally exhausted in the headlines is that of Jason M. Allen, a man who took home the first-place prize in the Colorado State Fair “emerging digital artist” category for his Midjourney-generated submission. Beyond eliciting outrage about the fairness of allowing Allen to submit a piece that was rendered by an “intelligent” machine, it worried artists whose labour and originality are remunerated. In a capitalist world, the fear of cheapening and expediting art creation is salient. 

“I think what history tells us is that with new technologies, again, it’s the low, low quality, cheap-cost, stuff that really makes the impact and not the high-quality virtuoso stuff,” Hong said. “We’re not talking about three-star Michelin restaurants, we’re talking about how McDonald’s revolutionizes the food business.”

Advertising content supports businesses best when it is cheap, fast, and plentiful. On a platform such as Midjourney, it takes no more than 15 seconds to generate a prompt. One can only imagine how content creators, advertisers, and even students could use this to optimize their time and subsequently generate an abundance of art with less care and thought behind it. 

Hong worries that AI art could become a cost-effective way for businesses to make increasingly eye-catching advertisements designed to sell us things, not to inspire artistic thought or contemplation. 

“We are going to be bombarded with more ugly, nonsensical, barely good enough art, in our buildings, in our books, and our album jackets, that’s going to be bad news for anyone who’s working in art and design and illustration,” Hong said.  

Job automation has been both incredibly innovative for some and incredibly scary for manual labourers, and creatives, too. The proliferation of AI art could seriously disrupt the labour market for freelancers who are already struggling to secure stable employment and livable wages.

With great art comes great responsibility. As it stands, regulatory frameworks are not robust enough to curtail the evil power of manipulating what people perceive as real and using it for capital gains. “We’re often met with this conundrum where tech advances very rapidly, [but] our policy moves very slowly. And so we’re always responding to technological change rather than being ahead of it,” Hayes told me. 

Results have yet to be released from a federal public consultation into copyright law and AI. Despite this, an AI art generator was legally registered as the co-author of an AI art piece, much to some law scholars’ consternation. The corporate pattern of releasing a product and sloughing off responsibility makes it even more challenging for the law to place blame when users abuse the product. 

A much less colourful world lies ahead if a greater proportion of the graphic art that decorates our institutions, billboards, and furniture stores comes from the same pool of images regurgitated through an algorithm at the behest of overworked labourers. 

But the sense of wonder generated by these AI creations and the idea of art for art’s sake cannot be ignored. Only when policy changes to protect creatives, and only if AI art companies keep their platforms accessible, will artists be able to do what artists do best: Use their medium to make sense of misery, critique systems of exploitation, and inspire change from the inside out. 

McGill Recommendations, Student Life

Gear up! It’s going to be a snowy winter

by Margo Berthier on

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As we reach the end of a long and strenuous semester, a brutal winter is steadily making its way to Montreal. The hints of snow and dips in temperature from these past few weeks only represent a mere glimpse of what is  to come. As of January,  expect a winter season filled with plenty of snow, rain, and mush, as well as record-breaking cold temperatures. Here are some ways winter will change your student lives on or off campus and how to adapt to this icy transition. So buckle up, it’s going to be a snowy ride. Winter is coming. 

Gear up!

Montreal winters are synonymous with extreme below-freezing temperatures, sometimes dropping below -30°C (86°F). It’s time to store away your light fall jackets and bring out the big guns: A proper winter coat is a must! Pair it with gloves, a cozy hat to keep your head warm, a scarf to protect your neck from icy winds, and insulated winter boots for a slip-free walk on icy sidewalks. Layers will be your best friend as you can always peel them off when you get warm inside––even those drenched in sweat. 

Watch out, getting to McGill will take longer!

Winter here also means snow-covered streets and more traffic. So, along with the additional time required to bundle up and slip on your winter gear at home, there will also be a couple of extra minutes added to your commute time. Keep warm and take advantage of the bus and metro system: McGill station, on the metro’s green line, is embedded in Montreal’s renowned underground city. This interconnected network of underground tunnels, while giving access to the metro stations, also houses shops, malls, offices, and entertainment venues, allowing you to walk through Montreal without having to step a foot outside. From the Quartier des Spectacles to the Eaton Centre, passing through Place d’Armes and Bonaventure, this system allows you to get from place to place while avoiding the brutal wintry winds. 

Shifting from outdoors to indoors

It can be tempting to hide out in bed when there’s snow on the ground, but keep in mind the myriad of opportunities found on campus to bring the energetic thrill of the outdoors inside. Some of these activities, including ice skating on the lower field rink, will keep you in shape and elevate your mood over the winter.  Moving your athletic routines inside for the winter months can be helpful to find consistency, keep the blood pumping, and focus on something other than your mounting pile of coursework. The McGill Fitness Centre offers a wide variety of pay-as-you-go exercise classes and intramural sports. From pilates and spin classes to intramural basketball, volleyball, and badminton, you are sure to find the weekly activity that will get you moving, even in the dead of winter. 

Don’t forget your vitamin D

Finally, the coming winter changes our lives drastically—the darkness and shorter days mess with our humour and lead to symptoms such as seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and an overall lack of motivation. A great way to elevate your mood and combat the lack of summer sunshine is to eat an abundance of vitamin D-rich foods, including salmon, mushrooms, eggs, oranges, tuna, tofu, milk, and even a sun lamp if you’re feeling fancy. 

Try and make it to your classes

Winter is an especially rough time for students who feel much less willing to trek to school. When winter arrives, class attendance takes a serious hit. Many McGillians feel discouraged from going outside, and when they do, they tend to return home much earlier due to shorter days. Many students opt for warmer and more accessible solutions, such as working from home or in cafés. 

Although you can’t really blame students for wanting to avoid going to class during the dark, snowy, winter days, there are alternatives. Try to avoid getting caught in this spiral of demotivation, and find a feasible routine to make your days easier. Wear appropriate winter attire, take advantage of the metro, stick to your weekly activities, take your vitamin D and, if needed, stay and work at home from time to time.

Formula One, Sports

Formula One is steering women out of the race

by Zoé Mineret on

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I fell in love with the sport of Formula One (F1) in 2020 after watching “Senna”, a documentary depicting the life of the famous Brazilian Formula 1 driver, Ayrton Senna. Three seasons of “Drive to Survive” later, I was hooked.

After watching several seasons of driver lineups consisting completely of men, discovering that F1 was not a men’s-only sport came as a shock. In my budding F1 fandom, I was yet to see any women on the racetrack nor was I aware of any women drivers in the sport’s history. I learned—only through individual research—that five women have attempted to qualify for a Formula 1 Grand Prix: Maria Teresa de Filippis, Lella Lombardi, Divina Galica, Desiré Wilson, and Giovanna Amati. Out of these five women, only Lombardi and de Filippis qualified for a race, and only Lombardi scored points.

Thirty years have passed since a woman last attempted to qualify for a Grand Prix. Since then, F1 has exclusively been a boys club. Unsurprisingly, this male-dominated environment does not exist only on the tracks; it extends into the management of the teams as well.

A 2021 study by ESPN examining the number of women working within F1 revealed the severe lack of gender parity in the sport. Mercedes’ core race team is comprised of  65 people—four of whom are women. Five women are part of the 66-person race team for McLaren, and no women work for the Alpha Tauri team.

Across gender, race, class, and ability, F1 is an inherently exclusive sport. With only 10 teams each with two drivers, only 20 drivers are lucky enough to compete each year. Furthermore, the exorbitant cost to succeed in F1 creates a major financial barrier to gain entry into the sport, let alone to train and access the equipment required to excel. Often, teams will only choose to work with drivers that have ample sponsorship funding as it provides them with more capital for car and team development. The majority of successful F1 drivers are able to accomplish this through relationships with sponsors and teams and for women, the sponsorship opportunities are few and far between.

The obstacle of finding sponsorships is even harder to overcome given the small number of women in karting––a four-wheel motorsport practiced by most racers when they are children to gain experience and build up the necessary reflexes to compete. In Britain, the under-16 karting license split is 14 boys to every 1 girl, putting over 93 per cent of licences in the hands of boys. The lack of representation for women in the categories under F1, such as Formula 4, Formula 3, or Formula 2, leaves many fans concerned about the high barriers to entry for women. F1 fan, Victor Henry, U3 Science,  expressed his concern about the lack of opportunities for women in the racing world.

“I think one day it could definitely be possible to see a woman race for an F1 team,” Henry told The McGill Tribune. “However, with the way things are in place today in F1, it makes it very hard for women to achieve excellence in this domain. In this regard, as long as the world of car racing does not change in a way that offers women equal opportunities, I don’t think we could see a female Formula 1 driver.”

Strides toward equal opportunities could be as simple as changing the car design to accommodate smaller physiques. Though performing well in the lower ranks is key to accessing F1, the car design of these feeder categories is often the same for all drivers in an effort to reduce costs. Tatiana Calderón, a Colombian racer in the 2019 Formula 2, explained that due to her height, weight, and foot size, she often struggles to perform to the best of her abilities as the car was made for men. The size of the braking pedal, for example, is made for bigger feet, forcing Calderón to press down on the brake with just her toes, losing strength and power. The size of the steering wheel is also made for bigger hands, which leads Calderón to suffer from heavy cramps following a racing weekend.

Despite facing difficulties in terms of accessibility, the dream of racing professionally is not out of the question for young drivers like Nicole Havrda. The 16-year-old Canadian racer is currently competing in the Indian Racing League as part of the Chennai Turbo Riders and helping pave the way for young women in motorsport.  

“I 100 per cent believe that in the future there will be a female driver racing, and I am working my butt off to achieve that myself,” Havrda said in an interview with the Tribune.

For women to gain access to that prized seat, there needs to be more initiative taken in the realm of motorsport to promote the involvement of women as both drivers and contributors to the racing world. 

“More large companies need to step up and help young and upcoming drivers make their way up the racing ladder,” explained Havrda. “It is hard financially for most drivers to be able to make it far [….] I was recently a part of the She’s Mercedes program [and] the campaign is helping create a path in motorsports for women like me.”

Other initiatives to increase the number of women in motorsport have also recently kicked off. Alpine has launched a Rac(H)er program to encourage the presence of women in the sport. The W series, a women-only competition without entry fees, seeks to eliminate the financial barriers that prevent many from racing. The recently-launched F1 Academy also aims to support women in navigating the different series of the sport. However, to many fans, these measures are only surface-level. In an interview with the Tribune, McGill alumna (BA ’22) Erin Smith expressed her concern that these newfound initiatives are simply not enough.  

“I […] think that F1 is doing basically next-to-nothing in terms of getting women more involved,” Smith told the Tribune.“I think F1 is almost kind of happy with this current status quo where women are in a completely different category when they are perfectly able, eligible, and willing to participate in Formula 1 and not W series [….] There should be better programs.”

The truth is that women have every capacity needed to drive at the same level as their male counterparts. Jamie Chadwick, a British driver who will be racing in the Indy NXT 2023 for Andretti Autosport, has won the W series three times, each by a large margin and remains unable to score a seat in the Formula circuit. 

F1 must do more to rectify the systemic exclusion of women within motorsport. A woman driver winning the highly competitive W series three years in a row should be able to secure at least a Formula 3 seat. F1’s initiatives to promote women racing can only work if the system is changed from within and women are seen as integral to the sport. Encouraging women to become racing drivers through programs yet failing to provide them with opportunities once they reach the higher stages of competition reveals the true colours of F1 leadership. There is no real desire for gender equity among those who hold power within the sport—just performative action. 

McGill, News, The Tribune Explains

Tribune Explains: Course Evaluations

by Lauren Huff on

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As the semester wraps up, many students may have heard in-class pleas and received emails asking them to fill out course evaluations. The McGill Tribune looked into how these feedback forms work and how their results are used by the university.  

How do course evaluations work at McGill?

At the end of every semester, any course at McGill that has five or more students is evaluated through the Mercury online platform. Course evaluations allow students to provide anonymous feedback to their instructors. The evaluation form includes sections for ratings and supplementary statements about the course, its content, and the instructor’s teaching style. Completing a course evaluation can take about five to 10 minutes depending on how much detail a student wishes to provide.

When is the deadline for students to submit course evaluations?

For most departments at the university, students are given a six-week window each semester to complete course evaluations. With approval from the Dean, instructors can opt to close course evaluations prior to the formal examination period, though the default deadline is when formal exams end. Students can consult the Mercury website to find out whether their course evaluation forms close on Dec. 6 or on Dec. 21. 

How are course evaluations helpful for professors and students?

According to McGill media relations officer Frédérique Mazerolle, the university uses course evaluations to determine the effectiveness of an instructor’s teaching style and to improve the future delivery of courses. Course evaluation results may also be used as a component of an instructor’s teaching dossier, which is a portfolio of an academic’s major teaching accomplishments. Mazerolle stressed that administrators and faculty rely on course evaluations for decision making and urged students to participate in the surveys. 

“McGill University values quality in the courses it offers its students,” Mazerolle wrote in a statement to the Tribune. “The more students fill out course evaluations, the more seriously feedback is taken by instructors and administrators.”

According to Mazerolle, each year 5,000 courses and 2,500 instructors are evaluated, but only 50 per cent of students fill out course evaluations.

 How can professors and students see the results from course evaluations?

Course instructors have access to the evaluation results only after they have submitted student grades for the semester. Though course evaluations are entirely anonymous and not linked to student ID numbers, this rule ensures that professors cannot be swayed by course evaluation feedback when grading students.

Students have access to numerical course evaluation results on Mercury or under the Course Evaluation Results tab on Minerva, though written responses are only made available to the instructors.  

How are course evaluations different from Rate My Professors?

Rate My Professors, a website where anyone can post anonymous reviews about an instructor, is another tool students may use to share their experiences with teachers from universities around the globe. Each review rates a teacher from “awesome,” “great,” “good,” “OK,” and “awful,” and ranks difficulty and quality levels of their courses on an ascending scale of one to five. 

Though the posts on Rate My Professors are not moderated or fact-checked, many students rely on the platform instead of McGill’s Mercury system. Susan Aloudat, U0 Arts, did not know about McGill’s internal course evaluations and, instead, consulted Rate My Professors when choosing courses for her first semester at the university. Though she will use both resources when finalizing her schedule for next semester, Aloudat is conscious of the biases of both platforms.“For example, I had a teacher that was like ‘if we can get to 60 per cent [participation in the surveys], then we will help you guys on the final exam’ so I did that but I didn’t have anything exactly pressing to say,” Aloudat told the Tribune. “Mercury would be more for very neutral responses. But if you want an opinion, then you’ll find that on Rate My Professors.”

News, SSMU

Legislative Council approves motion for SSMU to oppose COP-15

by Wendy Zhao on

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The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) held its fifth and final Legislative Council meeting of the Fall semester on Dec. 1. Members passed a motion for SSMU to take a position against COP-15, a motion to approve a renewed version of the expired Free Menstrual Hygiene Products Policy, and a motion to donate $4,000 of winter clothing to Resilience Montreal. Throughout the meeting, members also raised concerns about the Student Support progress report. 

Ajamu Attard, CEO of Student Support, a for-profit startup which provides students access to Calm, Grammarly, and Udemy through an opt-outable fee, reported that 36 per cent of students had paid the fee and were using Student Support’s services. The Student Support fee is currently in a testing period of one year before it will be up for renewal in Winter 2023 for a five-year term. Attard told the Council that most of the funds the company receives from student fees are used to provide the three services, with a small portion being allocated towards marketing. 

SSMU vice-president (VP) External Val Masny questioned whether the collected fees, which amounted to approximately $200,000 this semester according to Attard, was the best use of students’ money, suggesting it should alternatively be used to pay for psychologists. Attard argued that Calm offers a “different value” for students.

“I know for some students they start their journey with Calm, maybe they’re not comfortable going on the phone, or they just need to get something that they can instantly use to deal with whatever they’re going through,” Attard said. 

Near the end of the meeting, Masny presented a motion for SSMU to take a position against COP-15, the 15th World Conference on Biodiversity which will be held in Montreal from Dec. 7 to 19. The motion obliges SSMU to encourage its members to mobilize against the summit and provide financial and non-financial support, such as a teach-in, for those who do so. It argues that the summit’s objectives fail to challenge the role of states’ and corporations’ extractivism in the global decline in biodiversity and “the continued privatization of natural resources.” 

During the debate period, Councillor Benson Wan, Councillor Emily Thom, and Councillor Sedami-Habib Djossou expressed concern about one of the clauses in the motion that would require to SSMU to support the “Coalition anticapitaliste et écologiste contre la Cop 15” as an unaffiliated political campaign. Unlike affiliated political campaigns, unaffiliated campaigns have not received a mandate from either the Legislative Council, a Referendum, or a General Assembly. 

“I have a little bit of hesitancy with supporting this coalition outright in all their numbers without knowing exactly what they’re currently doing and what they will do, especially if they are a public coalition,” Wan said. 

“Perhaps the values are good, but […] [fucklacop15.org is]  quite a provocative name for an advocacy group,” Thom added. 

Wan motioned to remove this clause, and the amended motion passed with 12 councillors in favour. 

Moment of the Meeting: 

In response to councillors’ concerns about affiliating SSMU with the Coalition against COP-15, VP External Val Masny asserted that the coalition is a central base of organizing against COP-15, noting that various student associations in and outside Montreal have offered support. They explained that it would be difficult for SSMU to fully adopt a position against COP-15 if the union was unable to support students involved in the coalition. 

Soundbite: 

“[Education students at UQAM are] currently facing repression by the administration. The administration once marked their classes as withdrawals to discourage further strikes. This is unprecedented and very dangerous to student democracy. As such, we’re in the midst of writing a letter of support to students mobilizing against this repression.” 

— VP Student Life Hassanatou Koulibaly speaking on behalf of Masny about supporting education students at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) who went on strike for five weeks beginning in mid-October 


A previous version of this article stated that 36 per cent of the McGill student body has not opted out of the Student Support fee. In fact, 36 per cent of students had paid the fee and were using Student Support’s services. The Tribune regrets this error.

Commentary, Opinion

Systemic neglect continues as Montreal’s houselessness crisis worsens

by Chloé Kichenane on

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More than 3,000 people remain without a home this winter despite years of tireless advocacy from community organizations around Montreal. Almost half of Montreal’s unhoused population is Inuit, reflecting Quebec’s ongoing settler-colonial project. 

The city’s attempts at resolving the crisis remain inadequate and ineffective. In 2021, the city provided 1,550 emergency beds, created 10 new warming stations in different boroughs, and launched a program giving housing access to 200 people. Despite these efforts, houseless people in Montreal continue to tragically freeze to death. The city’s solutions seem to be nothing more than a ‘one step forward, two steps back’ plan, as the 14 shelters opened during the pandemic were reduced to three in the past year, compounding the shortage of emergency measures when there are no long-term ones in place. Although the provincial government has launched a $280 million investment plan for the next five years, this is not nearly an urgent enough measure to resolve Montreal’s long-lasting houselessness problem and shows that the city does not prioritize remedying it. 

A deeper dive into Montreal’s fiscal policy indicates that houselessness is not the city’s top priority. Mayor Plante’s $125,000,000 investment to build “the biggest park in Canada” as part of her “green deal” is not nearly as pressing as the houselessness issue, and it would take less than a quarter of that amount to provide permanent housing for those on the streets. Beyond this, the major increase of the Montreal police department’s budget to a total $787 million for 2023 ($63 million more than in 2022) is an absurdly unnecessary and ignorant allocation of taxpayer money. These funds, reserved for hiring more police officers, represent roughly 14 times more than what is invested in the city’s five-year plan to fight houselessness.

The city still engages in the brutal practice of evictions, such as the one planned for Nov. 10 near the Ville-Marie Expressway. The eviction was eventually delayed after dozens of protestors marched in solidarity, but the project is still ongoing and will displace an entire camp with nowhere else to go, to supposedly offer them better alternatives.

Though there are initiatives that offer short-term essentials for people in need, they cannot provide solutions for long-term structural problems. Mobilizing For Milton-Parc, a student-run organization that provides essential food and supplies, and the “Leave a coat” project in the Rosemont borough, are both examples of positive community-based approaches. Although these are important initiatives, they work to address the consequences of houselessness but cannot address the root causes of housing insecurity. The municipal government is failing at long-term initiatives and instead relies on band-aid measures. Meanwhile, community-based shelters, such as Resilience Montreal, stand alone by offering unfaltering life-saving services without sufficient government support. 

To bring the crisis to an end, the city must implement long-term programs such as affordable or transitional housing and harm reduction which will keep people in precarious situations safe this winter. If the municipal government truly cared about people experiencing houselessness, then they would divert funding to the social programs necessary to combat the systems that leave the city’s most vulnerable behind.  

The provincial and municipal governments must stop making excuses and finally take thoughtful action for its unhoused population, instead of subjecting them to violence. The burden of solving this crisis cannot continue to fall on the shoulders of community organizers and rather should fall on those of a provincial government that has more than enough resources to execute viable solutions. Unhoused populations need effective long-term support from the provincial and municipal leadership because coats may keep people warm for now, but they won’t provide the structural change necessary to save lives.

McGill, News

McGill begins eighth annual participation in Hydro-Québec Peak Demand Management program

by Shani Laskin on

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McGill Facilities Management and Ancillary Services (FMAS) has announced that the university is once again participating in Hydro-Québec’s Peak Demand Management (PDM) program—marking its eighth year of participation—this winter. The state-owned energy corporation experiences periods of peak demand on especially cold days from December to the end of March, mostly in the mornings and evenings when people are likely to spend time in their homes. During these hours, Hydro-Québec encourages consumers, including universities like McGill, to use less energy.

Sixteen McGill buildings have protocols in place for peak demand hours, such as reducing or turning off energy-intensive systems. According to Jerome Conraud, director of utilities and energy management at McGill, the university’s measures work to reduce demand on Hydro-Quebec’s grid, but do not necessarily reduce McGill’s overall energy consumption.

“Many buildings across McGill have back-up emergency generators [….] During PDM events, we transfer these loads to the generators so that they are no longer receiving power from the grid,” Conraud wrote in a statement to The McGill Tribune. “This allows us to significantly reduce demand on Hydro-Québec’s grid while minimizing impacts to operations within the building.” 

For residential consumers, Hydro-Québec advertises a dynamic pricing system that offers discounts to individuals who reduce their energy use during peak demand hours. Similarly, McGill receives money from Hydro-Québec for its participation in the PDM program, which are then used to cover operational costs such as staff wages. The money also goes towards improving energy systems on campus, with any remaining funds allocated towards other energy-saving initiatives like investing in energy-efficient infrastructure at McGill.

Donald Smith, a professor in the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (AES), believes that McGill’s incentive to participate in and advertise the PDM program is not purely environmental.

“There could be an economic incentive. There’s an overall environmental and social consideration around that, too, because if [energy usage] gets spread out […] an entity like Hydro-Québec doesn’t have to go off and dam more rivers,” Smith said. “I’m sure from McGill’s perspective, there’s a PR thing to it. I think they are generally trying to be conscientious about these things.”

While Hydro-Québec boasts 99 per cent renewable energy sources, McGill should still aim to reduce overall energy use according to professor and founding director of the Max Bell School of Public Policy Christopher Ragan.

“If we can […] use less energy, then, first of all, we can save money by spending less on even clean electricity,” Ragan said. “But it also means that society then has more clean energy available. Because whatever Hydro-Québec is producing, if we use less of it, then there’s more available for other uses, including to displace dirty energy.”

McGill also limits the number of running elevators and electric heating units in certain buildings during the PDM period. Smith added that there are important trade-offs to be considered when decreasing energy usage campus-wide. He explained that while energy efficiency is crucial, McGill would receive negative feedback if those energy efficiencies interfered with accessibility essentials—for instance, having reliable elevator service.

Conraud stressed in his statement that McGill has other initiatives in place that aim to reduce energy use on campus as part of the university’s Climate and Sustainability Strategy. 


“McGill has made major investments into reducing energy consumption,” Conraud said. “Since 2013 we have reduced our energy and carbon intensity by 15 per cent and 24 per cent, respectively, with many more projects ongoing and planned to further reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions.”

Off the Board, Opinion

When memories lie in Soviet apartment blocks

by Anna Chudakov on

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As a kid, I remember driving back from the Moscow airport with my family, preparing for another summer in Russia, and refamiliarizing myself with the city after being away for a year. Looking out the window, my childish, curious gaze was often confused by the differences between architectural styles across the city. While the fringes of Moscow were speckled by the same muted concrete apartment buildings, only distinguishable by the wear they’ve endured over the years, the city centre was marked by the grandeur of Stalinist buildings that competed for my attention. In my naivete, I always felt a sense of disdain for those grey apartments (even though I spent most of my summers around them) and questioned why more of Moscow hadn’t been granted what I thought was architectural beauty. 

By the time I was a teenager, I recognized that my attitude toward those concrete buildings as a kid was simplistic, and thankfully, I grew mature enough to understand and appreciate the history those buildings held. I learned that they were called Khrushchyovkas and were built as a cheap and fast solution to the 1960s housing crisis in the Soviet Union. Standing through the fall of the USSR and into the 21st century, those apartment buildings continued to exist as a place for me to grow as I fostered friendships in the playgrounds that many Khrushchyovkas were huddled around. The buildings would nudge me outside onto the playground when I felt lonely in my temporary home and allowed me to make friends who I’d spend the summer days with, year after year.

As the COVID-19 pandemic challenged international travel and college started taking over my time, my visits to Russia were put on pause, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this past February forced me to rethink my relationship with the country. In the early days of the war, every Skype call with my family was shadowed by what we could and couldn’t say, as we tried to discern the differences in information we were receiving across the world. Through these phone calls alone, I could feel the polarizing difference between Canada and Russia and how restricted life was over there. I now look back at myself as a kid, watching the Russian news if it ever caught my eye, completely unaware that it was state-controlled television, and feel so disconnected from the innocence I lived in back then. Amidst this internal turmoil, I found myself feeling nostalgic for those summer days on the playground near the Khrushchyovkas. 

With the war continuing to unfold, I was relieved to discover that some of my family were among the thousands of Russians leaving for Armenia. Their relocation was also an opportunity for me to visit them after so many years apart, but I had to remind myself that this visit would be nothing like my childhood summers. Nonetheless, when I arrived in Yerevan, I found glimpses of the architecture that I recognized from Moscow wedged into the cityscape. If I looked carefully, I could find the same Khrushchyovkas I remembered from my childhood, but this time, softened by the pink hue of the volcanic stone that is characteristic of the city. 

That soft tint that altered the Khrushchyovka-like buildings that were otherwise so familiar marked the distance that had arisen between my childhood self and who I am now. While the Yerevan landscape settles some of my nostalgia and permits my reminiscences, the pink hue distinguishes this place from my childhood. This difference, however, presents me with the space to grapple with the complexities of the world as I understand it now. I will never experience my quiet childhood summers again or see Russia the way I once did. But in exploring Armenia, I have located where comfort and growth can coincide.

Letters to the Editor, Opinion

Letter to the Editor: If you can’t start on time, then don’t do it in person 

by Elson Galang on

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In a Nov. 22 article by The McGill Tribune about the Post-Graduate Student Society (PGSS) Fall General Meeting, they highlighted the meeting’s enormous delay as the “Moment of the Meeting”. The meeting was scheduled to start at 7:15 p.m., but as reported by the Tribune, did not start until 8:06 p.m.—a delay of almost one hour! Indeed, I can attest that it was a moment. Thus, let me share my utmost disappointment with what happened. 

Before this meeting, PGSS sent out invitations to its constituencies to attend because, according to them, “your voice matters.”  They provided two options: To attend in person or via Zoom. My friend and I, both graduate students, decided to attend in person at Thomson House. We saw this as an opportunity to better understand what is happening within the PGSS and contribute to its decision-making process. We also wanted to show our solidarity with the PGSS and further empower the collectively beneficial outcomes that could arise from the meeting.

Optimistic as we were, we arrived at Thomson House at 6:45 p.m. We went up to the Ballroom Hall at 7:05 to get settled but were told that there was still an ongoing PGSS Council Meeting. We decided to return at 7:15 and were told that the council meeting had been extended for 15 more minutes. My friend and I thought this was okay, but when we went back 15 minutes later, we were again told that the council had just voted to extend their meeting by another 20 minutes, without assurance that the General Meeting would begin after. My friend and I decided to leave. 

When I found out through a Tribune News article that the meeting was delayed by almost an hour, I knew we had made the right decision not to stay. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt the same disdain if I had participated online and instead waited in a Zoom waiting room. But the PGSS making its invitees wait upwards of an hour is completely disrespectful, rude, and insensitive, especially to those who decided to come in person. When they asked us to come, we came. However, it felt like our voices did not matter. It felt like we were third-class PGSS members whose attendance is only needed to reach a quorum.

In my email to the PGSS—to which I have yet to receive a response—I asked them to reflect: Was there no other way that they could have started on time or at least minimized the time they asked for registrants to wait? Why was there no formal notice about the potential delays? Why invite in-person attendees just to ask them to wait around for an hour? 

It’s tempting to roll my eyes when learning from the Tribune that the meeting did not even reach a quorum, or one per cent of its membership. Cases like this, trivial as it may sound, damage my trust in the PGSS.

Maybe I should just sing out my disappointment at one of their Karaoke nights?

Elson Galang, Ph.D. Candidate

Editorial, Opinion

SSMU executive midterm reviews

by The McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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President – Risann Wright (she/her)

Risann Wright (she/her)

Risann Wright campaigned on a platform of facilitating policy-driven and equity-focused institutional change at SSMU. Over the summer and Fall 2022, Wright has been actively  fulfilling these objectives. She created an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) working group to develop an EDI plan that promotes equity across all areas of SSMU. Her portfolio is also drafting an inter-faculty relations policy and creating a social responsibility strategy in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. To fulfill her other campaign promise of ensuring more direct support for students, Wright launched the SSMU Pilot Grocery Program to aid those facing food insecurity due to financial constraints and inflation. Wright’s initiatives represent an impressive commitment to supporting students, but going forward, she should be more communicative about her portfolio with both the broader student body and campus media. 

Marco Pizarro (he/him)

VP Finance – Marco Pizarro (he/him)

Marco Pizarro has been a welcome presence at SSMU governance meetings and around SSMU’s executive offices. As a francophone, Pizarro has served as an unofficial translator for other executives at governance meetings, ultimately amplifying the voices of francophone students. Beyond this, Pizarro has managed to fulfill several of the tasks in the VP Finance’s mandate.  For example, Pizarro and the finance team have managed to implement a trial run of a Legal Protection Plan, streamlined clubs’ access to their finances, and adapted to the post-pandemic revival of student life. He has also focused on decentralizing the power SSMU holds, including his own. Pizarro has been navigating his role without the support of a General Manager, who is responsible for SSMU’s business and corporate obligations, along with the Society’s accounting. Though increased transparency would be appreciated in the form of additional emails or widely accessible finance reports, Pizarro has performed well in his role.

Kerry Yang (he/him)

VP University Affairs – Kerry Yang (he/him)

Kerry Yang’s priorities this semester included the expansion of the Menstrual Health Project and academic wellness projects. The Menstrual Health Project, which distributes period products free of charge and is funded by an SSMU fee, now has more locations on campus, offers disposable and reusable products, and has hosted two giveaways this semester. In addition, Yang successfully advocated for a revised exam deferral policy that prioritizes public health: Students who contract COVID-19 no longer need a medical note to defer their exams, even if it is not their first time deferring. Other academic wellness initiatives he is working on for next semester include note-sharing services, for-credit health and wellness courses, and more Open Educational Resources, such as syllabus repositories. In terms of equity and accountability, he is working on reforming the Involvement Restriction Policy (IRP), which processes and acts on complaints of discrimination and violence, and tightening SSMU’s Gender and Sexual Violence Policy. Overall, Yang has had a successful term. Going forward, he should continue advocating for accessibility on campus, ensuring the sustainability of his academic wellness initiatives, and pushing for the administration to decentralize harassment and discrimination complaint procedures. 

Hassanatou Koulibaly (she/her)

VP Student Life – Hassanatou Koulibaly (she/her)

Hassanatou Koulibaly has been very busy since becoming VP Student Life. Not only did she organize the first fully in-person Activities Night since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, but she has also instituted honorariums for students who sit on SSMU’s mental health committees, soft-launched myWellness—a platform powered by Compass that lists mental health resources on and off campus—hosted a mental health awareness week, and more. Koulibaly has also tried to make herself more available to students by hosting coffee hours every other Thursday, and by making time for appointments most days, rather than during specific office hours. For the coming semester, Koulibaly is working on launching Gerts Cultural Nights—these evenings will focus on diversifying the crowd that attends Gerts Bar and Café. Overall, Koulibaly has fulfilled most, if not all, of the VP Student Life mandate and is on track to continue doing so next semester. 

Val Masny (they/them)

VP External – Val Masny (they/them)

Val Masny, whose office represents SSMU outside of McGill, focused their campaign on accessibility and stressed their goal of supporting mutual aid projects in Milton Parc and engaging more with the student body to prioritize transparency. This year, they organized the “Building an Activist Community” workshop and ran a housing rights workshop. Overall, Masny has been very active in fulfilling their office’s mandate. However, it is difficult to measure their portfolio’s progress since they did not respond to an interview request. Transparency should be a priority for the VP External, and going forward,  Masny should be more accessible to students seeking to learn about their work.

Cat Williams (she/they)

VP Internal – Cat Williams (she/they)

Cat Williams’ main priority throughout her campaign was increasing student involvement in campus life and SSMU events. In line with this goal, they organized an SSMU Halloween party that saw over 800 students flock to the University Centre. Williams also helped run an alternative non-alcoholic event during Frosh to ensure greater accessibility for non-drinkers. With a focus on accessible and equitable event planning, Williams looks forward to the upcoming Faculty Olympics and Graduation Frosh in the Winter semester. Despite these successes, a large part of Williams’ campaign centred around increasing SSMU’s transparency toward the student body, an important objective that has yet to be realized. Going forward, they would benefit from working more closely with their staff to fulfill this promise. 

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