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Off the Board, Opinion

The risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math

by Michelle Siegel on

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In middle school, I spent objectively too much time reading dystopian Young Adult fiction novels and watching rom-coms from the 1990s and 2000s, which have now left me with a questionable repertoire of references and an insatiable taste for casual insurgency. I’ve never considered my attempts at nonconformity as dangerous to others simply because the scale of my “anarchy” is what many would call pathetic.

Like many of my other personality traits, I could easily blame my weirdest qualities on my immediate family. To many of my friends, buying a pair of ripped jeans or eating a sandwich with white bread are simple, unweighted choices. For me, deliberately calculating the cost-benefit analysis of such choices is a crushing reminder of how I’m disappointing my mother. The idea of buying white bread—even when it’s on sale—sends a chill down my spine, lighting up my nervous system with my eight-year-old self’s fear of stepping out of line.

While I have no qualms about hiding my purchase of what my mother calls “overpriced pants that have already been broken” from her, I always feel a sense of anxiety when stepping into them, as if I have gained a power I have no control over. Even though I fully understand that the pants annoy my mother, it feels almost stupid to think that wearing pants with holes in them is a way to forge some kind of path forward for myself. 

I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself as a rebellious person, but I am often compelled to do things that I had previously avoided at all costs, as long as there are hilariously low stakes. For the majority of my life, I actively avoided any and all scary movies. When I went to see //Titane// (2021)—a body horror drama film about a serial killer—I felt a glowing sense of pride as I left the theatre, even if I watched most of the movie’s gruesome first third through my fingers. It may not have been a traditional “scary” movie, but having previously avoided horror like the plague, it felt like a weird, powerful step towards overcoming my fears.

Sometimes I think that these casual acts are just a product of all my own insecurities—maybe a new angle at which I can attempt to not be myself. Because of my persistent inclination towards making self-deprecating jokes, I know that it’s easy for me to joke about the low-stakes nature of these challenges. But inadvertently, some of these new efforts have brought me genuinely closer to different parts of myself than I had previously thought possible. 

I’ve spent a solid two decades complaining about sports: I got excited about the Super Bowl solely because of the buffalo wings and would constantly decry that I didn’t get sports—it was easy to hide my chagrin from not understanding them behind loud expressions of hostility. Yet, for all the times I’ve annoyed my family by complaining about the television constantly being tuned to the sports channel, my dislike has finally started to crack. While my brother bribing me with takeout to watch Mets games with him didn’t exactly spark joy, following the Rangers during the Stanley Cup playoffs last year with my family was an intense, yet jubilant experience. Watching every game was more than just a few hours of visual engagement; it was a true bonding experience. Becoming a hockey fan probably should have felt like a betrayal of my own opinions, but I found that picking up the game was more of a fun challenge—I don’t understand a good amount of the rules, but I still won’t quit.

I’m not immune to wishing I could take risks that are indubitably serious, or wanting to know more surely where that drive comes from. But for the most part, I’m pretty content with my low-pressure unrest—if the worst thing that can come from it is ribbing from my family, I can probably handle that. Regardless of how strange or mundane some risks may seem, if they bring me closer to myself and to my family, I see no good reason to stop.

Commentary, Opinion

Canadian mining: Putting a price on Latin American lives

by Monique Kasonga on

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Canada is one of the world’s most prominent players in the mining industry, and its presence has been swiftly growing since the 1990s. Nowhere is Canada’s dominance seen more clearly than in Latin America—where between 50 and 70 per cent of mining activity involves Canadian companies. 

With its neocolonialist control over the mining industry, Canada holds immense influence over the political and environmental landscapes of Latin America. This control has proven to be devastating, with mining being responsible for the highest proportion of human rights violation complaints in Latin America.  North American governments also create a trap of terrible conditions that workers in the mining industry cannot escape due to restrictive immigration policies in Canada and the U.S. Educational institutions that prepare students to enter the mining industry, including McGill, are complicit in the detrimental effects mining has on Latin American countries. With Canada’s oldest mining engineering program, McGill must re-orient its mining program towards sustainability and end its perpetuation of mining’s destructive status quo. 

Canadian companies participate in extractivism, by which minerals are extracted from the Earth with virtually no regulation to maximize profit. The lack of enforceable guidelines leads to terrible working conditions and environmental destruction, such as pipeline failures that cause cyanide solution to enter waterways. Canada funds and directs most mining operations in Mexico, which are notorious for poor labour conditions such as exposure to explosives, or toxic gases that contribute to injury and death through workplace accidents, lung disease, and cancer. Although the extractive model of mining provides workers with jobs, the lack of regulation stifles workers’ rights in an industry where conditions are already brutal. Furthermore, this practice encourages an economic focus on resource extraction that weakens the economic self-determination of the resource-rich region. 

Inequitable mining practices are directly contributing to the displacement and subsequent migration of Latin American peoples. Although illegal border crossings have seen a downward trend in the past 20 years, Canada and the U.S. have been arresting and detaining more people than ever over the past three years with the numbers still on the rise.  Migrants resorting to illegal entry often come from Mexico, where smugglers profit off of locals needing to escape dangerous working conditions, poverty, and violence. Canada already has a history of displacing and exploiting racialized peoples to achieve its economic goals, as evidenced by the construction of pipelines on Indigenous lands. 

McGill prides itself on the fact that its students and alumni have “shaped the face of mining” in Canada and around the world. With this pride should also come responsibility. The McGill Research Group Investigating Canadian Mining in Latin America (MICLA) is a research collective based at McGill that aims to fund public research and debate regarding Canadian mining in Latin America. Composed of students and faculty, MICLA is part of the university’s ongoing effort to link teaching with research and to connect these to the public interest. However, they have not released any public updates since 2013. McGill students working in mining research should be examining Canada’s neocolonial practices, and the MICLA’s mission should be revived to spur activism for those forced to work in these poor conditions. 

To truly transition to sustainable mining, governments and corporations must acknowledge the horrific impacts of current mining conditions and bring forward laws and regulations that have undergone community consultation. The needs and concerns of those inhabiting the land must be prioritized in the development of a project to ensure the community is not harmed. Further, McGill must take the proper steps to change the devastating state of the mining industry by incorporating sustainable and ethical mining practices into its curricula.


It is crucial that the Canadian government be held accountable for its exploitative practices in Latin America. The unethical tactic of displacing workers and subsequent denial of safe and equitable migration cannot continue. McGill must pool its resources to prepare its students to promote positive change in the mining sector. Having the oldest mining program in Canada means nothing if it is not being continually updated to serve the needs of today. McGill must stop resting on its reputation of prestige, and work on sustainable changes.

Research Briefs, Science & Technology

Flatworm-inspired bioadhesives allow pressure-free hemorrhage treatment

by K. Coco Zhang on

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Hemorrhages account for about two million potentially avoidable deaths around the world every year. With a 30 to 40 per cent rate of trauma mortality, the impact of hemorrhages worldwide cannot be understated. Yet, a group of researchers at McGill made a remarkable improvement in its treatment by developing bioadhesives derived from structures found in flatworms to efficiently handle pressurized blood flows in non-compressive hemorrhages. 

Hemorrhages are caused by blood loss due to damaged blood vessels. The bleeding can be minor, resulting in a bruise, or significant, leading to fluctuations in vital signs and altered mental status. Hemorrhaging can occur outside the body, as a traumatic wound, or inside the body, as internal bleeding. Internal hemorrhages require clinical investigations that include physical examinations, laboratory tests, diagnostic imaging tests, and close monitoring of vital signs. 

Various factors  can lead to hemorrhaging, such as alcohol abuse, drug use, tobacco consumption, cancer, surgery, or damage to an internal organ. Uncontrolled hemorrhaging leads to decreased blood flow and oxygen supply to organs, which could ultimately result in organ failure, seizures, coma, and death. The treatment for a hemorrhage depends on its anatomical location, the extent of the blood loss, and the patient’s symptoms. 

External bleeding can usually be treated by applying direct pressure and placing tourniquets near the wound. However, the treatment of non-compressible hemorrhages, when wound sites are inaccessible, remains challenging. Current treatments, including the use of hemostatic agents (thrombin and kaolin) and bioadhesive sealants, have major drawbacks: They can be insufficiently absorbent and are difficult to store.

Researchers from McGill developed bioadhesives modelled after structures found in marine animals, such as mussels and flatworms, to remedy many of the problems presented by traditional adhesives.

In a new study published in Nature, Jianyu Li, a professor in McGill’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, and his team have proposed the use of liquid-infused microstructured bioadhesives (LIMBs) as an innovative strategy to treat non-compressible hemorrhages. 

“These interesting microstructures provide us with a solution to handle heavy blood flows, which is mission-critical in the cases of non-compressive hemorrhages,” Li said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “They act like a sponge, sucking in the blood at the source of [the] wound, can rapidly induce clotting, and can instantaneously form strong bioadhesion that seals bleeding sites. This new material is mechanically robust and tough to encounter pressurized blood flows and can be instantly removed after surgery.”

As their name suggests, the LIMBs are formed by infusing liquids into a bioadhesive gel called xerogel, which absorbs blood and promotes clotting at bleeding sites. Infused liquids facilitate interfacial bonding and sealing—sticking formed by the intermolecular forces in liquids. The synergy of xerogel and infused liquids allows the bioadhesives to form robust adhesions without having to apply pressure. 

Unlike traditional wound closure methods like sutures, wires, and staples, bioadhesives are less invasive and promote wound healing through various mechanisms, such as the release of antibacterial and growth factors, induced host immune responses, and delivery of healthy cells. The bioadhesives possess antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and self-healing properties, and can remain stable on the site of application due to their intrinsic adhesion property derived from flatworms. These bioadhesives also prevent leakages after surgery, which account for 30 per cent of complications that can easily result in pain, inflammation, infection, and death. LIMBs were validated through both in vitro and in vivo testing using pig models.

The application of LIMBs is quick and pressure-free, making them suitable for non-compressible hemorrhages. Additionally,e LIMBs minimize the risk of re-bleeding upon removal and can be left inside the body to be absorbed. 

“Our material showed […] better-improved safety and bleeding control efficiency than other commercial products,” Li said. “Beyond bleeding control, our material could one day replace wound sutures or deliver drugs to provide therapeutic effects and would have important implications in various clinical settings and even the Canadian Armed Forces.”

Commentary, Opinion

Why is Frosh always such a flop?

by Chloé Kichenane on

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As this fall semester comes to an end, I find myself looking back at my own first semester and reflecting on all the typical freshman experiences I had. Upon moving to Montreal, Frosh was my very first glimpse of what university life had to offer. As an ignorant international student, I had no idea what ‘Frosh’ actually meant. But one thing was certain: I didn’t want to be left out of it. Unfortunately, for me as well as for many others, Frosh turned out to be a huge letdown. Though some leave Frosh ready to do it all over again and become Frosh leaders, others, like myself, want nothing more than a refund for their money, time, and energy.

As an active Frosh hater, I pride myself on having pushed through the whole week and (almost) every single organized activity. This included painfully long movie nights and 9 a.m. bar crawls with the disrespectful 10 centilitre solo cups of lukewarm beer.

This brings me to my primary complaint about Frosh week, which is, like most things offered by McGill, the outrageously high cost. When I first agreed to pay the $170 fee for Arts Frosh, I surely didn’t expect having to additionally pay more than $30 every day for food and drinks, as barely any are included. Maybe it is too big of a grievance, but is it really unrealistic to expect a university to make its orientation week more financially accessible to students? Is it so unreasonable to think that an event with such an inescapable drinking culture would actually provide drinks?

Most people who attended Frosh will agree that the moments of bonding with your group rarely happen during the organized activities. Rather, it’s during the more intimate group dinners or parties at Frosh leaders’ apartments where actual friendships bloom. Unfortunately, none of these are an official part of Frosh and, thus, fall at a student’s own expense. If Frosh refuses to include more activities for the price paid, it seems like all those on a tighter budget will have to skip out on the unofficial but essential experiences of that week.

Yet, my complaints only stem from my personal experience with Faculty Frosh, and it is important to remember that other options, such as Rad Frosh, for outdoors amateurs, or Fish Frosh, for those who may not want to drink, are available. These alternatives gather smaller groups of like-minded students rather than throwing hundreds of first-years who barely have anything in common into the same sweaty pit. In that regard, non-faculty Froshes seem to allow more space for first-years to actually get to know each other and form close bonds—in a way that is certainly more meaningful than the awkward ice-breaking sessions at Jeanne Mance.

More than anything else, your Frosh experience heavily depends on your leaders and your fellow froshies. Here’s a warning: It doesn’t matter how many times you will promise each other to catch up and have a Frosh reunion, you will most likely forget about it and maybe vaguely nod at each other when your paths cross in the sinister atmosphere of the Royal Victoria College cafeteria.

I might be a professional Frosh hater, but I will recognize that maybe I was just unlucky in my experience. Frosh is not all that bad, as some movie-like miraculous friendships and meet-cutes emerge from it for the most fortunate among us. But to cap off my list of grievances, here’s what I will say: If Frosh was a little less sacralized as a must-do first-year experience and was more oriented toward connecting students with each other, then it might not be such a flop.

McGill, News, The Tribune Explains

Tribune Explains: Financial Aid at McGill

by Hanna Hipwell Serfaty on

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There are various avenues available to undergraduate McGill students in need of financial aid, from merit-based entrance scholarships to government aid or bursaries. The McGill Tribune looked into the resources available on and off campus, and how to access them.  

What financial aid is available to incoming undergraduate students?

McGill has an Entrance Bursary Program for entering undergraduate, medicine, or law students who demonstrate financial need. The value of an entrance bursary varies depending on an applicant’s extent of need and tuition fee rate as determined by their program and living situation. In order to qualify, students must complete their Financial Profile on Minerva, which requires information about their salaries, cost of living, and their and their families’ tax information. Canadian and American students must also fill out a CSS profile. 

Students registered with McGill’s Student Accessibility & Achievement may be eligible for the Entrance Bursary even if they are pursuing part-time studies. Additionally, any student receiving aid through the Entrance Bursary is automatically enrolled in McGill’s Work Study program, which offers a host of on-campus jobs and incentivizes campus employers to prioritize Work Study students when hiring.  

What financial aid is available to current undergraduate students?

McGill’s in-course financial aid is also need-based and can be offered to students at any point during their studies, provided they are taking a full course load. Aid is granted in the form of a bursary or a loan. To apply, students must complete their Financial Aid profile on Minerva, detailing their tax information, income, and cost of living. Once their profile is completed, a student can contact a financial aid counsellor at McGill who will determine the amount of aid for which they are eligible. This decision is based on the level of funding available each year, the number of applicants, and the relative need of other candidates. 

How do tuition fee deferrals work? 

Tuition fee deferrals are in place to give students an extended deadline to pay tuition without any late charges or registration holds. Deferrals are granted if students can prove that they are waiting on funds such as bursaries, government loans, or delayed international transfers. The Scholarships and Student Aid Office examines a student’s situation and approves the submissions made through Minerva. 

How do emergency loans work?

The university has emergency loans available to students experiencing sudden, extreme financial hardship, such as homelessness or severe food insecurity. Students must complete an In-Course Financial Aid application and update their Financial Aid profile on Minerva in order to make this request. 

What kind of government financial aid is available for Quebec residents?

The Quebec Government offers loans and bursaries to eligible Quebec residents pursuing post-secondary education. Eligibility is based on marital status, type and length of education, cost of tuition, and income. Applications must be submitted through a Student Financial Aid File. Students must apply a minimum of six to eight weeks before the beginning of the semester in order to receive their funding in time for the start of term. Importantly, the loan must be repaid after students graduate. When the time to repay student debt approaches, students must contact their financial institution’s student loan centre to negotiate their repayment schedules and interest rates. 

What kind of government financial aid is offered for out-of-province students?

There are both federal and provincial government aid programs available for out-of-province students. The Canada Student Financial Assistance Program offers grants and loans to eligible students to pay for their education, textbooks, and living expenses. Students are deemed eligible based on their tax information, income, number of dependents, and disability if any. Just like Quebec, each province has its own financial aid program. Federal and provincial financial aid can be combined. 

What kind of financial aid is offered for international students?

While international students must demonstrate financial security and the ability to fund their education and living costs to be eligible for a Certificate of Acceptance of Quebec, they may still be eligible and considered for the Entrance Bursary, scholarships, in-course financial aid, tuition fee deferrals, Work Study, and emergency loans. 

Off the Board, Opinion

No, you’re not OCD for liking things organized

by Oliver Warne on

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Content warning: Mentions of mental illness and descriptions of intrusive thoughts and compulsions

I was 17 when I finally started to seek help for my obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The signs had been there for a long time, but it took me receiving a proper diagnosis to realize the scale at which it was affecting my everyday life. After six months of weekly therapy sessions, coupled with the support of my family and friends, I finally gained enough control to get my life back on track. I learned a lot about myself during those six months, but, most importantly, I learned that having OCD is not to be taken lightly.

OCD is a mental illness that affects roughly 350,000 people in Canada, but that’s only those who have received formal diagnoses.. Its symptoms may vary from person to person but generally involve unwanted or intrusive thoughts, which often provoke anxiety and fear, as well as ritualistic actions to help cope with said thoughts. Intrusive thoughts can manifest themselves in many ways, from fear of contamination to the inability to throw things away. For instance, I would often have anxiety-provoking thoughts about those close to me getting injured, and the only way I could shake them from my head was to perform seemingly arbitrary rituals, such as obsessively checking that the doors were locked or that the oven was turned off. If I didn’t do these rituals, I would have trouble sleeping, with thoughts of intruders or housefires racing through my mind.

I used to be embarrassed by my OCD, partially because I knew that so many people still don’t take it seriously. I have heard that a crooked picture frame is “triggering someone’s OCD” or that people who like to clean their rooms are “OCD about it” too many times. These are sentiments that I have been hearing my whole life, at school, on the internet, everywhere. Every time I hear someone making a joke about OCD, it cuts deep, as people don’t seem to understand how horrible it truly is. I had felt the paralyzing anxiety caused by my OCD for years before I finally received help, and it is something that continues to afflict me to this day.

I would like to think that most people who say such things are not saying them out of malice, but rather out of ignorance. It is very easy to fall back on stereotypes that have been parroted for generations, but it takes effort to learn about what the condition really entails. There have been countless times where I have heard these same annoying jokes being made, and while I desperately wanted to tell people to stop, I didn’t out of embarrassment and anxiety.

Luckily, more initatives have cropped up in recent years to help educate and spread awareness about OCD and its symptoms. International OCD Awareness Week, which takes place every year in early October, helps destigmatize OCD and provide resources for those diagnosed with the condition. The campaign is run by the International OCD Foundation, a non-profit which aims to help those dealing with OCD around the world. They have done a lot of great work educating the public on a condition that is still widely misunderstood.

Unfortunately, there is no “cure” for these obsessive-compulsive thoughts, but there are many great resources and coping mechanisms that I am very grateful for. It is an affliction that I still deal with on a day-to-day basis, but I am in a much better place now than I was before I sought out professional help. Unfortunately, professional help is not always easily accessible and McGill’s resources for mental health support are severely lacking. From difficulties getting appointments, to staffing shortages, it can be incredibly tough for students to receive the help they need. However, there are many free, professional services, such as AMI-Quebec, that offer mental health support and counselling to those in need.

I am now at a point where I am proud to say that I am no longer ashamed or embarrassed by my OCD. It is something that I myself and many others deal with on a daily basis, and it must be taken seriously. Hopefully, with continued efforts and better education, we can finally break away from the misconceptions that continue to stigmatize people to this day.

Arts & Entertainment, Pop Rhetoric

What’s wrong with world music?

by Yash Zodgekar on

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On what grounds do we describe music that breaks with Western traditions? Does the simple label “world music” suffice? Unsurprisingly, this term was not popularized by so-called world musicians. Rather, like much of the language we use to describe music, it was the creation of profit-minded record label executives. In 1987, industry tycoons were looking to capitalize on the success of Paul Simon’s South African-influenced Graceland to start selling more music by African artists to Western audiences. They settled on “world music” as a broad marketing term to denote music not originating from Europe or North America. 

In many ways, the top-down nature of this term’s inception and its formulation in the absence of any actual musicians is reflective of its problems. World music casts an otherness upon the music it encompasses, demarcating it solely by the fact that it’s not Western, rather than what it sounds like or how it was composed. It’s clear to any listener that the Brazilian Tropicália music of Caetano Veloso bears no more, and arguably much less, relation to North-Indian classical music by Ravi Shankar than it does to Western pop or rock music. To lump the two artists under one bracket ensures that the designation of “world music” is defined by its proximity to our narrow conception of Western music. This reinforces a Western hegemony that casts foreign art and culture as less high-brow or unsophisticated. This has pervaded the way we engage with art throughout history, both in terms of how it is marketed and how consumers perceive it. 

Such a characterization fails to grant non-Western artists the individuality they deserve. When it comes to Western artists, entertainment media is more than willing to hyper-taxonomize, creating ever-more specific genre labels to describe the next progressive-metal-influenced mathcore band or post-punk revival act. Pigeonholing artists into overly narrow labels can itself be unhelpful, but this tendency of music journalists highlights that they can be specific in their descriptions of artists when they actually make an effort. Identifying the specific genre of a foreign artist operates as a basic courtesy that would crucially enable such artists to forge their own musical identity distinct from their nationality. 

Besides the lack of respect the term “world music” affords artists, the designation lacks any utility for listeners. At their best, genre labels help differentiate between different kinds of music, describing how an artist sounds or the movement they belong to so that listeners can gravitate towards music they are more likely to enjoy. A broad-strokes term like “world music” fails because it reveals so little about the fundamental basis of music: How it sounds. What types of instruments does an artist compose with? What kinds of harmonies do they employ? What lyrical themes do they explore? Labelling an album as world music does nothing to answer any of these questions. 

The perniciousness of this term is symptomatic of one of Western music media’s major failures: It can’t challenge the premises on which its viewpoints rest. Panels for music awards, such as the Grammys, regularly shoehorn Black artists’ musical achievements into the category of rap, or until recently, “urban” music, in spite of music often not fitting into those characterizations. Meanwhile, the Golden Globes’ critic panel decided to place Minari (2020) into its foreign film category due to its dialogue being predominantly in Korean, despite the American-produced film’s central tenet being the promise of the American Dream to U.S. immigrants. These examples demonstrate how the merits of the works of non-Western artists and people of colour are routinely conceived of through a white-centric viewpoint. 

Ultimately, what “world music” gets wrong is that, for its artists, world music is just music. Labelling music in binary terms based on its Western or non-Western origin is not just disrespectful: It’s bad music journalism. 

Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

Seeing Quebec through a new lens in ‘Lida Moser Photographer: Odyssey in Black and White’

by Kellie Elrick on

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In the summer of 1950, Lida Moser set out from New York City on a journey to capture the spirit of Quebec through photographs. She was a single woman travelling with three men: Ethnologist Luc Lacourcière, folklorist Félix-Antoine Savard, and Paul Gouin, cultural advisor to Premier Maurice Duplessis. She did not speak a word of French. 

Today, her corpus of over a thousand photos continues to resonate with Quebecois and non-Quebecois people alike. They have been carefully preserved in the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) and exhibited at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. Now, they live on vividly in the animated short film Lida Moser Photographer: Odyssey in Black and White, produced by Academy-Award nominated filmmaker Joyce Borenstein. 

The McGill Tribune sat down with Borenstein and former McGill professor Norman Cornett to discuss the film and the lasting impact of Lida Moser’s photographs. 

“What started me on this quest was seeing her photographs. They just bowled me over, they were exquisite. They recalled my idyllic summers as a child,” Borenstein said. “My parents rented and then bought a little old schoolhouse in the middle of the farmland of Quebec, in the Laurentians. We played with our neighbours, who were francophone farming kids. We didn’t need language at the time [….] We got along beautifully, and summers were my favourite times in my childhood.”

Currents of profound understanding run through the film. Borenstein was born in Montreal to an immigrant, anglophone, Jewish family, and relates to Moser as a woman persisting in a patriarchal world. She explores the complexities of feelings of otherness with lyrical empathy, by placing herself in Lida Moser’s shoes. 

“I retraced her steps, I did her journey two and a half times,” Borenstein said. “It came alive, and I fell in love.” 

Professor Norman Cornett, also a Montrealer, was likewise captured by Moser’s photographs and Borenstein’s film. Earlier this fall, Cornett discussed the film in depth with Borenstein as part of a series of video dialogues.

“What intrigues me in Lida Moser Photographer as a religious studies scholar is, particularly as it relates to [Bill] 96 and nationalism, it’s as though through the animated documentary, we can see Quebec, its history, its people, its language, through another lens, in another light,” Cornett said.

The film’s Quebec is not the Quebec of postcards or brochures. Lida Moser’s photos do not depict eminent figures, grand buildings, or familiar landmarks. They show children growing up, playing with kittens, and people sitting outside, working with tools. What, then, shapes La Belle Province are not majestic monuments, but images of everyday life. The resulting photographs relate to outsiders in Quebec and abroad in their sheer authenticity. 

For Cornett, this approach, grounded in everyday occurrences, captures Moser’s essence. 

“Lida Moser comes from that milieu, that ambience, of Jewish, left-leaning, socially conscious artists [….] They want to tell the people’s stories, not the bankers’ stories […] they want to tell the untold stories,” Cornett said. “To what extent are we doing justice to the history of French Canada, to the history of Quebec, if we’re only looking at it through the lens of those that are bigger than life?” 

The film’s focus on everyday life crucially presents a rare and accessible ethnographic picture of Quebec in the 20th century. The language-less nature of photography and animation makes them boundary-breaking mediums to tell the story of a province whose identity exists entrenched in the French language. 

“Somehow art gets through […] no matter  the language,” Cornett said. “Art transcends language, art transcends ethnicity, art transcends identity, art transcends the boundaries, the barriers, between us. And that is the beauty of Lida Moser Photographer. She doesn’t speak a word, and yet we hear her loud and clear.”

Lida Moser Photographer: Odyssey in Black and White is currently in distribution, but is available to McGill students as a DVD via interlibrary loan.

Behind the Bench, Sports

Decolonizing tennis, tournaments, and talent

by Matthew Molinaro on

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When the greatest of all time, Serena Williams, made a return to tennis this past June, she decided to play doubles on the grass at the Eastbourne International. Looking for an in-form partner, she called up the talented Tunisian Ons Jabeur. Jabeur, the first Arab woman to break into the world’s top 10 and the first African woman since South African Amanda Coetzer to enter these elite ranks, had just won the Berlin Open the week prior. This duo electrified the crowd, upsetting higher-seeded doubles specialists and putting together ludicrous shots and angles that would make the most pretentious geometrist jealous. 

As the 2022 season closed, Jabeur capped off a prodigious and productive year––reaching the finals at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, spearheading efforts to hold a tournament in Monastir, Tunisia, and finishing second overall in the world rankings. 2022 was a standout year for African tennis. Along with Jabeur’s remarkable successes, Mayar Sherif became the first Egyptian woman to win a Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) title in Parma. 

However, the winning efforts of players alone should not be incumbent for African tennis or Arab tennis to matter. Looking ahead to 2023, the administrative bodies of tennis—the WTA, in this case—must actively commit to decolonizing tennis. They must loosen the grip the United States, Great Britain, Europe, and Australia have on the overwhelmingly white sport by building new tournaments and training centres to increase access to tennis for women players across the world.

Let the statistics radicalize you. Jabeur, ranked no. 2, and Sherif, ranked no. 50, are the only two African tennis players in the top 100. The next highest-ranked African tennis player? World no. 265 Sada Nahimana from Burundi. The only WTA tournament in Africa slated for next year? The Moroccan Open, a WTA250 level tournament scheduled a week before the French Open––meaning that players will be less likely to participate. Tournaments in the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia raise high ticket sales, and bigger tournaments like those in Dubai, Qatar, and Tokyo serve as mainstays of WTA tennis. As well, successful players from underrepresented countries, such as Brazil’s Beatriz Haddad Maia, Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina, China’s Qinwen Zheng, and Colombia’s Camila Osorio continue to make leaps. But this work multiplies when they have to fight to be seen. 

To make a living as a tennis player, you have to win at the big tournaments and you have to do it year-round. A run to the quarterfinals at one of the four Grand Slams held in Europe, Australia, or America will win you approximately $400,000 USD. A semi-finals run in one of the WTA1000s garners $300,000 USD. A victory at one of the two WTA500s held in Asia (out of 12 total) could save your career, pay for your flights, your coach, your accommodations, your physio, your equipment, and your clothing—as you don’t have a sponsor until you become an American citizen. You had better hope that your friends and family from home won’t miss you when you’re in Ostrava. Can you afford the constant flights out of Addis Ababa, Lagos, or Kinshasa in order to compete in the most highly touted WTA tournaments and hopefully make a living in tennis? Non-European, non-Australian, and non-North American tennis players comprise only 12 out of the top 100 who get prioritized entry into where to play. How can you compete with one another in a game already rigged against you? 

Tennis needs to move past its dangerous individualism, laden in its claims as the “most civil sport.” The WTA is not ready to properly celebrate Jabeur, Sherif, Naomi Osaka, or Li Na––the first Asian woman to win a Grand Slam who built the WTA1000 Wuhan Open. It may be when it dismantles the systems that prevent players who look like them and who come from the same underrepresented countries as them from rising. 
The WTA’s Player Council, which does not include a representative for Africa, must push for equity. As their investments in the 2021 WTA Finals in Guadalajara show, the WTA should seek out opportunities to stimulate not only tournaments, but training centres for youth across the African continent. Fans should watch tennis both for the matches and for certain players’ unfair advantages. For us in the African diaspora––Black, North African, and Arab fans stirred by her brilliance alike––seeing Ons do well marks a fateful first step for the dreams we share of a decolonized future for tennis.

McGill, News

Student advocates call for reform of McGill’s harassment and discrimination policy

by Jasjot Grewal on

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Content Warning: Mention of sexual violence and racism

McGill’s Policy on Harassment and Discrimination allows members of the university community to take action when they feel they have been harassed or discriminated against. The policy and its accompanying procedures outline how to file complaints and prompt investigations into both individuals at McGill and the university’s systemic practices. While it is intended to provide support to students navigating the official complaint process, many—including Black and 2SLGBTQIA+ students, and members of student advocacy groups—are dissatisfied with the policy’s framework and implementation. In interviews with The McGill Tribune, student advocates familiar with the policy explained that they have found several issues with it, such as inefficient procedural practices and a lack of legitimate third-party intervention. 

Complaints about harassment or discrimination are brought to McGill’s Office for Mediation and Reporting (OMR), which was created after the policy’s revision in 2021. McGill media relations officer Frédérique Mazerolle explained it as “an office dedicated to the independent and impartial oversight of the resolution of reports of harassment, discrimination, and sexual violence” in an email to the Tribune.

Once a complaint is filed with the OMR, assessors—typically members of the university’s staff—begin the investigation process. According to section 6.2 of the policy, reports may be handed to an external third-party assessor if one of the investigators has a conflict of interest, if one of the parties is a member of the OMR, or if one of the parties is a member of McGill’s senior administration. Regardless of whether the assessor is an independent party or not, the Provost is responsible for making a final decision that concludes the investigative process. 

“If the assessor’s report determines that the evidence is sufficient to find that harassment and/or discrimination has occurred, then the Provost will inform the parties in writing of the decision to refer the matter to the appropriate University disciplinary authority to determine disciplinary and/or administrative measures,” Mazerolle wrote. 

A case’s appropriate disciplinary authority depends on the role of the accused, according to section 6.16. The appropriate authority in the case of a student is outlined in the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures. In the case of a staff member, it will be the dean of their faculty or the dean’s delegate, whereas in the case of a Vice-Principal, it would go to the Principal. The Chair of the Board of Governors presides over cases involving the Principal. 

Queer McGill administrative coordinator Brooklyn Frizzle is concerned about what they believe is the Provost’s outsized role in managing harassment and discrimination complaints. Frizzle stressed that a Provost’s individual biases can have an impact on how cases are handled. They pointed to previous comments that the former Provost and current Interim Principal Christopher Manfredi made in Senate meetings. 

For example, Frizzle took issue with Manfredi’s indication—during a Nov. 18, 2020 Senate Meeting—that there is no inherent concern with McGill professors signing a petition to support a professor using racial slurs in their teaching.

In an interview with the Tribune, Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) vice-president (VP) University Affairs Kerry Yang explained that the OMR might not be completely detached from the university given it fits within the Equity department under the Office of the Provost and remains under the administration’s jurisdiction. 

“Although they say it’s all to remain impartial, based on how the structure is, it doesn’t seem that way,” Yang said. “There’s no recourse if [McGill does] conduct something in bad faith because it’s all centralized. How can we ensure that what [McGill] is saying is impartial is truly impartial?”  

Frizzle also takes issue with how the Policy serves 2SLGBTQIA+ students. They explained that many queer students who tried to file a complaint under the policy were advised by the OMR that their complaint would not be successful in an “investigative setting,” which ultimately discouraged them from seeking justice. 

“Most of those cases are not investigated. They’re not formally documented and there’s no assessment made, typically, because they’re kind of pre-screened,” Frizzle said. “They advise a student that now this doesn’t meet the definition, so it probably wouldn’t go anywhere.” 

The most recent annual report on the Policy on Harassment and Discrimination noted that only eight per cent of inquiries with the OMR led to formal reports in 2020-2021. However, 47 per cent of all inquiries met the definitional requirements to launch a report. 

Alex*, a student advocate, believes there are purposeful factual errors and omittances in McGill’s records. 

“Many other Black students had filed harassment and discrimination complaints under McGill’s policy, and […] it wasn’t conducted properly in the sense that [McGill] literally lied,” Alex explained in an interview with the Tribune.  “There were factual mistakes in the [reports]. They failed to include key elements, so it was intentionally not done properly.” 

Alex compared the Policy on Harassment and Discrimination to the university’s Policy against Sexual Violence (PSV), which they believe is much more robust due to continued momentum from the #MeToo movement. 

“Oftentimes when there’s a movement and there’s this kind of shift, like social pressure on a particular issue, sometimes it’s […] tied to a specific momentum and then it fades,” Alex said. “In [the case of sexual violence policies], we see this continuous legislative improvement and oversight. But when it comes to harassment and discrimination, it’s not the same.”

Frizzle explained that another reason McGill may prioritize updates to the PSV could be its provincial legal obligations. Bill 151 mandates universities to establish strong policies addressing sexual violence, whereas there are no specific laws mandating universities to institute policies against harassment and discrimination. 

“McGill is a very big fan of the bare minimum, legally,” Frizzle said. “So, of course, they are going to take it more seriously because if it’s found that they’re not investigating sexual violence, then that has a much bigger […]  legal implication than […] failing to address harassment and defending professors that use racial slurs in our classroom and uplifting the voices of people who perpetuate injustice.”

The additional staff members who are employed to assist in anti-discrimination policy-making often occupy roles with limited abilities. Alex explained that the Black Students Liaison Officer, who is responsible for supporting Black students, is not allowed to engage in any advocacy or directly aid students who have filed complaints. They also noted that McGill has recently eliminated the position of Assistant Dean (Inclusion – Black and Indigenous Flourishing), who was tasked specifically with supporting and recruiting Black and Indigenous law students. This position has been replaced with the Assistant Dean (Students), who carries out several student affairs duties in addition to being the dean’s lead on Black and Indigenous flourishing.

Both Yang and Alex believe that McGill’s Policy on Harassment and Discrimination must be revised to make it a more effective support mechanism. The most efficient way to conduct investigations, they say, would be entirely through an independent third party. Alex also suggested increased levels of academic accommodations for students during the complaint process and a provision to encourage advocacy throughout McGill’s governance channels.

“Every time I go to [governance] meetings, white administrators always say that ‘we don’t do any advocacy,’” Alex said. “But if we’re talking about equity issues and we’re trying to improve a structure, the whole point is to demand that these structures be more equitable, and that requires advocacy.”

*Alex’s name has been changed to preserve their anonymity.

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