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McGill Senate responds to petition for extended winter break

by Margaret Askey on

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Jules Barbe, U2 Arts & Science, shared a document authored by Elle Bremmer, U3 Arts, titled “Petition for an Extended Winter Holiday,” on Nov. 10, asking the administration to consider extending the current 12-day break. Since then, the petition has garnered over 9,000 signatures. During a Nov. 18 Senate meeting, Principal and Vice-Chancellor Suzanne Fortier announced McGill’s official response to the issue, saying a decision would be reached at the Dec. 2 Senate meeting. 

Barbe began the online petition after observing the adverse emotional and psychological toil the online semester has had on his peers.

“I kept seeing on social media, mainly [on] Reddit, how hard the semester was for my fellow students,” Barbe wrote in an email to the Tribune. “[It has been] very hard on students and professors alike. It’s very easy to […] see first-hand how students were impacted by online school [its] many challenges. ”

Barbe believes that McGill’s inaction on the issue is only exacerbated in comparison to other Quebec institutions that have already implemented a longer holiday.

“[E]veryone seemed completely defeated, especially seeing how other universities were getting a longer break themselves,” Barbe wrote. “Nothing’s [going to] change if we don’t try anything.”

On Nov. 20, a MRO McGill Communications email announced the administration’s intention to vote on extending the Winter 2021 semester at Dec. 2’s Senate meeting. Barbe expressed enthusiasm that his efforts have seemingly resulted in action from the administration.

“[The] announcement from the admin that they are sincerely planning to extend the break […] is a very good response […], and I’m looking forward to the decision they will make,” Barbe wrote. “This definitely made me more hopeful.”

Vice-President of University Affairs of the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Brooklyn Frizzle helped disseminate the petition after Barbe reached out to SSMU. Frizzle explained to The McGill Tribune that it was important for SSMU to endorse the petition because they are an organization meant to advocate on behalf of the student body.

“[The petition] gained traction immediately after its release and the next logical step was to ask the Executive Committee to endorse the petition on behalf of SSMU, which we hoped would add some legitimacy to our efforts,” Frizzle wrote. “More broadly, this is an issue that students feel incredibly strongly about, and it just made sense for SSMU to put some force behind the petition.”

Frizzle explained that extending the break would benefit students who are feeling frustrated and burnt out by the online semester.

“Students need a break—it’s that simple,” Frizzle wrote. “We’re overworked and under-equipped to deal with such a chaotic and emotionally taxing semester. An extra week off is the least the university can do [….] I think faculty need this break as much as we do, not only to rest but to prepare.”

Frizzle responded to the university’s official consideration of an extended winter break, voicing their concerns with the process ahead.

“The fact that it took an emergency Senate motion […] on top of a petition with nearly 9,000 signatures for the university to even formally acknowledge the possibility of extending the break is telling in and of itself,” Frizzle wrote. “My concern […] is that if the university does end up announcing an extended break, they’ll do so without acknowledging the tremendous amount of student labour [involved].”

At the McGill Senate meeting on Nov. 18, Fortier did not provide a concrete explanation of the administration’s current plans.

“There was a motion submitted [Nov. 17] asking Senate to defer the start of the winter term by one week,” Fortier said. “We are actively exploring the possibility of adjusting the calendar of dates in order to postpone the beginning of classes in the winter term.”

Fortier acknowledged the need for an expedient decision-making process.

“We know it is very important for us to make a decision on this matter very soon, but […] we [need to] take the time needed to make a considered decision,” Fortier said. “We’re expecting to bring a motion to Senate on this matter in two week’s time, [on Dec. 2].”

A previous version of this article stated that Jules Barbe began the petition. In fact, it was Elle Bremmer who wrote the petition, and Barbe who disseminated it. The Tribune regrets this error.
Baseball, Sports

MLB must do more than Instagram posts to celebrate Kim Ng

by Miya Keilin on

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Kim Ng became the first female general manager of a Major League Baseball (MLB) team when the Miami Marlins hired her on Nov. 13. With 30 years of experience and six League Championships, she is one of the most overqualified individuals to ever be hired as a general manager. Her accomplishment garnered a tremendous amount of attention, both in and out of the baseball world, largely because it resonated with many groups of people. 

Ng’s hiring is a victory, because front offices are not designed to allow people who are not white men to rise to powerful positions—or even enter the building in the first place. Another woman, another person of colour, has broken a glass ceiling in an industry dominated by white men. As an Asian-American woman, especially one that loves baseball, thinking about Ng fills me with so many emotions: I feel proud, inspired, represented, worthy, and powerful. 

The league, teams, and other baseball-affiliated individuals and organizations should absolutely celebrate Ng and her historic achievement. Baseball social media accounts like MLB and the Marlins team posted a stream of quotes, artwork, and videos about Ng in the last week, and she more than deserves the attention. However, it was frustrating to see organizations make these posts without recognizing that they themselves play a historic role in keeping people like Ng out of baseball. Since the beginning of baseball, they have built and continued to uphold a culture that makes it challenging for minorities to be hired in positions of power. By failing to acknowledge this, these organizations are doing a disservice to her and every person she has inspired along the way. 

2020 has been the year of performative actions for MLB. The Black Lives Matter protests in May and June reopened conversations on discrimination against Black people within baseball; MLB took part in these conversations reluctantly. On Opening Weekend, opposing teams held a long piece of black fabric, a seemingly performative gesture highlighting the league’s inadequate efforts to support its Black players. Even with COVID-19, MLB failed to make genuine efforts. They paid for ads and campaigns to show appreciation for frontline healthcare workers, urging fans to take the pandemic seriously. However, when it came down to their bottom line, the league was all too willing to throw their respect and gratitude out the window and invited 11,388 fans into Globe Life Field to cheer—and breathe—together. 

So when organizations posted Kim Ng quotes and images on their social media accounts, I also want to know what concrete actions they are going to take next. I want to know how, from the top down, they are making systemic changes to public messaging, hiring, and combating internal racism and sexism. I want to know how they are going to make sure the next Asian-American woman doesn’t have to be as overqualified or wait as long as Ng did to get the job they earned. I want to know what they are doing to ensure that men like Brandon Taubman are not welcome in baseball. 

The best way for baseball to honour and celebrate Ng is to uproot the deeply ingrained culture of sexism and racism in the sport and finally live up to the ideal that baseball is for everyone. This responsibility does not rest solely on the Marlins, MLB, or any other single organization. The response from major league organizations to Ng’s historic achievement cannot simply be articles and tweets about how “awesome” she is. It is in spite of MLB that Ng rose through the ranks and was finally hired as a general manager. Her grit, hard work, and intelligence is remarkable; however, she is not the only woman who has ever possessed these qualities. I’m so excited that Kim Ng is finally getting her shot. I just hope that many more will soon get theirs too. 

Features

Strings and other things

by Adam Burton on

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Growing up, my favourite movie scene was the wand-shop sequence from Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone. The scene opens with Harry entering Olivander’s wand shop, surrounded by towering shelves of wands and surfaces cluttered with tools and scraps of parchment. After trying an array of wands, he settles on one that feels just right. Olivander explains, “The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Potter. It’s not always clear why. But I think it is clear that we can expect great things from you.”

To me, this scene offered a parallel fantasy to picking out a string instrument—an experience every string musician has in their life. A luthier—a maker of stringed instruments—brings out an array of instruments, and lines them up on a counter for you to play. After what can be a multi-day selection process, the musician picks the instrument they will play for dozens of hours a week, for what will hopefully be the rest of their life. Montreal’s classical music community is tightly-knit, and musicians at all levels—students, teachers, and amateurs—have been facilitating musical collaboration and connection before and during the pandemic. The amount of love and labour that goes into music making and crafting instruments is important, broadening horizons and encouraging people to pursue their passions.

Lili Saint-Michel manages sales, rentals, and institutional relations at Jules Saint-Michel Luthier, a string instrument shop in downtown Montreal. Saint-Michel studied biochemistry at University of Montreal, but when she developed tendinitis in her hand 25 years ago, she decided to start working at her father’s violin shop.

“The relationship with customers is very diversified,” Saint-Michel said. “You never get bored because the violin is something you can always learn more about [….] Repairs are very interesting. Sometimes, we may have a violin in the family that hasn’t been played for a long time and we put it back in playable condition, and it can be very emotional [….] It’s very nice to see the connection between people and their instruments through the restoration process.”

Research Briefs, Science & Technology

With tumours, it’s what’s on the inside that counts

by Namrata Rana on

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For the first time, McGill researchers have detected regions of high rigidity within the developing tumour microenvironment (TME) of breast cancer tumours. These findings, published in Nature Communications, suggest new possibilities for mapping the progression of invasive tumours based on the physical properties of the TME, including tissue stiffness.  

The TME, the area surrounding cancer cells, is enriched with several different cell types, blood vessels, and components of the extracellular matrix. The TME can impact tumour progression, determining whether a primary tumour will metastasize and spread to another site within the body, remain dormant, or be terminated.

Stephanie Mok, first author of the study and Ph.D candidate in the Faculty of Chemical Engineering, spoke to the The McGill Tribune about the aims of her research and its potential implications for breast cancer treatment. 

“It can be hard to predict when tumours become aggressive, [so] we wanted [to put] a physical biomarker within tumours that can experience what a cell does,” Mok said.

Smart hydrogels are stimuli-responsive gels that rapidly change their shape in response to alterations in pH, temperature, and in the presence of specific chemicals. The first hydrogels used within human tissues were proposed in 1960, after which they became popularized for biomedical applications such as drug delivery. A variety of materials, both naturally derived and synthetic, can be used to make hydrogels. 

Mok and her team developed injectable thermo-responsive hydrogels that remain intact at body temperature and expand at lower temperatures. The degree to which these gels can expand is a direct indication of the “stiffness” of surrounding tissues.

“The goal of making a sensor system to measure internal stiffness within tumours was done because we didn’t know what physical profiles looked like in tumours,” Mok said.

Mok explained that hydrogels must be functionalized with a tag, such as a simple peptide sequence. This tag ensures that the immune system will not consider the hydrogel a foreign invader, a complication that could lead to rejection. 

“We were excited to see that the hydrogel probes remained in animals for a whole month without creating any adverse effects,” Mok said. “Hydrogels must be made to look more ‘native,’ allowing binding to neighbouring cells, similar to how a cell senses its environment. Any hydrogel material without functionalization looks like a blank space [to surrounding] cells, and [they] won’t react with it.”

Mechanobiology, the study of the physical forces that act on cells and tissues, is an emerging field in medicine that has recently been applied to oncology. Once cancer cells have spread successfully, secondary tumours must continue mutating to adapt to their new environment. Their ability to rapidly adapt to changing microenvironments is what makes cancer cells so difficult to eliminate.

Research shows tumour penetration in two-dimensional models are incapable of capturing the complex cellular dynamics that occur in vivo, meaning within a living organism. By culturing cells in a three-dimensional matrix, scientists have demonstrated that cells do not continuously proliferate as they do on two-dimensional cell plates. In three-dimensional models, cells form higher order structures that more accurately depict the formation of real tumours.

The McGill team of researchers hopes their study will open doors for understanding the effect of the local mechanical microenvironments on the complex processes of cancer progression.

“We are hopeful [that] in the future these findings can improve the mapping of progression in invasive cancers,” Mok said. “However, the goal of our study was to emphasize the importance of asking basic questions from a multidisciplinary perspective.”

Off the Board, Opinion

A piece of wisdom worth four thousand dollars

by Ruobing Chen on

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It is easy to believe that everyone who falls victim to a scam is uneducated or foolish until you are trying not to cry while informing your parents that you have lost $4,000 in your first year of university.

I received a call from the Montreal Police Department as I was leaving the lobby of the Carrefour Sherbrooke residence, and, astonished, I picked it up. Claiming to be the police, they told me that someone had accessed my bank account and that this person was using the funds for illegal drug purchases. They also said that they would move my money into a protected account while they were investigating the case. I asked them whether I should tell my parents, but was told that I would put anyone I informed in danger of conspiring with me in possible illegal wrongdoing should I be found guilty. And so, I could not. I did not want anyone else to go to prison for something I did not do.

After a visit to withdraw funds from the bank and an Uber ride to the address the scammers gave me, I transferred my assets, in cash, into a bitcoin machine. It took two hours of waiting for the bitcoin transfer receipt to arrive for me to realize that I had been scammed and would not be getting my “safeguarded” $4,000 back.

When I recount this story, the plot holes appear, and I am overcome with the feeling that I should have known better. However, it was not my naivete that led me to become $4,000 poorer; rather, it was the circumstances I was put in. I know to tell people when I need help and had little understanding of bitcoin at the time. But once I thought that I had been caught up in a deep, legal mess, fight-or-flight mode kicked in. Judging those who have fallen for scams is unfair. Some people are simply more susceptible, and some may believe that the world has more saints than evil-doers.

Those who fall victim to scams are not just grandparents targeted for their lack of understanding of newly developing technology and criminal methods, but other individuals who are vulnerable in different ways. This includes many first-year students, who have, in many cases, been sent out into the world to live as liberated, functional adults for the first time. Receiving the gift of independence was a heavier burden than I realized, and I was perhaps not prepared for the consequences of my actions to be as large as $4,000. 

A few things I have picked up, although too late, have equipped me to defend my financial assets should scammers attempt to abuse them again. Caller ID is not a reliable source of whether the call is a fraud: I had been called from what was stated as the Montreal Police Department, but it was only after I spoke to the real police that I found it was a fake ID. More importantly, in dangerous situations, sometimes it is not enough to trust one’s initial judgement: Stopping for a moment to breathe, thinking through the situation, and talking about it to someone you trust could spare you from tumbling down a rabbit hole of irrational choices. Scammers sometimes isolate their victims, rushing them in the hope that they will not realize that they have been robbed until it is too late. Besides financial judgements, first year is a time in which many students are outside their depth of experience and must adjust to making decisions that result in serious consequences. Consulting others is not a sign of weakness—it is a step to adjusting in an unpredictable society. 

Being wary of these low-profile scams could save you from paying a hefty price. Trust me, the non-refundable knowledge was not worth it. 

Commentary, Opinion

Don’t expect much from in-person courses this winter semester

by Camille Delagrave-Ajduk on

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Despite announcing earlier in the semester that the Winter 2021 semester will mostly take place remotely, on Nov. 4, McGill sent an email describing its intention to expand in-person teaching for Winter 2021. The news broke while COVID-19 outbreaks continued to rise within primary schools and high schools, and alongside growing evidence that the educational sector had become the main driver of transmission in Montreal. With winter approaching and new daily coronavirus cases plateauing at a high number, concerns about classroom ventilation are amplifying, and schools are scrambling to find alternative ways of preventing further outbreaks. Clearly, in-person teaching has been difficult to manage and has exacerbated the pandemic in Quebec. 

Given the current situation in Montreal and my own experience with attending in-person classes, McGill’s decision is unreasonable. The school should be cautious when promoting it and students should not expect a high quality learning experience.

In their email outlining McGill’s plan for the winter semester, Associate Provost (Teaching & Academic Programs) Christopher Buddle and Deputy Provost (Student Life & Learning) Fabrice Labeau shared a link to a FAQ page that summarized the health precautions and tiers of academic activities to be implemented. However, the page did not mention or elaborate enough on important issues like ventilation and the use of masks. Indeed, the school has yet to disclose much about its COVID-19 ventilation plan. Although masks are mandatory when commuting indoors, once students are seated, they are not, and instructors cannot require students to wear them. Having been inside a socially-distanced classroom, I can attest that students are seated closer than one would expect and that there remains a significant health risk. Aerosols, such as those produced by sneezes, can reach distances over two meters, and students may forget to put their masks on when moving around. The school should reconsider the spacing of seats, or enforce the wearing of masks in classrooms. 

Furthermore, although McGill’s administration has recognized that students prefer in-person teaching, it cannot expect most of them to show up. Many students have already decided to stay away from campus for the winter. Ensuring that these students are able to participate equally can add additional strain to professors and TAs, who will need to balance two very different teaching formats this upcoming semester. 

Beyond the specifics of in-person courses, the pandemic is unpredictable, and students may not even have the opportunity to come to school. McGill moved ongoing courses that would be classified under the “Tier 2” category online when Montreal entered the red zone in early October, and they have yet to be held in person again. Tier 2 teaching, which consists of seminars, conferences, tutorials, and lectures, will be moved back online this winter if the city remains or re-enters the red zone—a highly likely scenario. Sudden switches in course delivery can be burdensome and confusing for faculty and students alike. The evidence shows clearly that there is uncertainty regarding the progression of COVID-19, and students’ learning will be impacted by new developments.

Although the prospect of attending in-person courses is exciting for many students, expanding them may not be realistic. This is due in part to concerns regarding the school’s ventilation systems, the lack of information on the health measures that will be implemented, the low number of students that will be able to attend, and the possibility of remaining in a red zone. Although McGill has reported few cases of COVID-19 transmission on McGill’s campus, the school needs to be more explicit about its plan for Winter 2021 and must reconsider some of the measures it put into place previously. In the meantime, students must demand more information from McGill and, unfortunately, not get their hopes up about having a quality experience on campus next semester. 

Science & Technology

What machines cannot learn, and what they should not be taught

by Zoe Karkossa on

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Artificial intelligence (AI) developers are no longer satisfied with programs that play checkers and optimize search engine results, and have moved toward loftier ambitions such as diagnosing leukemia and probing the creators’ inner emotions. Humans often perceive AI as being inherently superior to their own minds, completely free of earthly flaws and fallacies. However, according to Meredith Broussard, author of Artificial Unintelligence, all technology is fundamentally imbued with the beliefs and biases of those who design it—for better or worse.

Broussard presented her critical look at contemporary media’s infatuation with AI at an event for the Feminist and Accessible Publishing and Communications Technologies’ Speaker and Workshop Series. She emphasized the important distinction between “real AI,” or technologies that currently exist, and those of science-fiction fantasies. 

The ultimate goal of AI research is to create a general intelligence that can adapt to a broad variety of situations, which some scientists argue may not even be possible. Building a sentient computer with this type of intelligence is a far cry from even the most cutting-edge computer programs being developed today. Current applications of AI, such as machine learning, are all forms of narrow AI focussed on mastering very specific tasks.  

“Narrow AI is just math,” Broussard said. “It’s computational statistics on steroids.” 

This form of AI is not transcendental, but rather a program that, when fed copious amounts of data, improves itself. All of its algorithms are produced by humans, and people inevitably build their own biases into the code they write.

Broussard describes “technochauvinism,” a term she coined in 2018, as the tendency to place computers and their decision-making prowess above human intelligence. The concept originates from the select group of white male mathematicians educated at prestigious universities who started developing the field of AI in the 1950s. According to Broussard, these men embedded their own biases in the technologies they imagined.

Technochauvinism also affects which researchers and projects receive funding. Renowned AI expert Marvin Minsky, who was part of a group of early advocates for space elevators, is just one of the privileged scientists benefitting from this system. His hypothetical technology has managed to stay relevant in intellectual circles despite the billions of dollars in funding it would require and the fact that it will likely never be realized. 

The technochauvinism that benefits Minsky, according to Broussard, is also responsible for male students and faculty members in STEM-related disciplines continuing to harass their female peers at alarming rates, making these fields discriminatory towards women, as well as inherently more dangerous. This is a fact Broussard sees reflected in current technologies.

“The computer is not inherently liberating,” Broussard said. “Just because we use technology does not mean that we are furthering the cause of justice. In fact, the opposite is true. Many times when we’ve used technology, what we’re doing is embedding existing biases in code, and we are perpetuating existing social injustices.”

Broussard presented a number of techniques that can be used to repudiate the obsession with AI. Foremost, Broussard advised the audience to understand what AI really is: A machine designed by primarily male scientists that only knows as much as it is taught. Next, governments should establish a federal consumer protection agency to audit and regulate the algorithms that regulate everything from social media feeds to decisions in healthcare.

Broussard concluded by recommending that consumers assume discrimination is the default in all automated systems and learn to recognize the impact these technologies have on labourers. She gave the example of “ghost workers,” the people who perform the often traumatizing job of filtering content posted on some of the internet’s most popular sites. 

“When you flag something horrific on Facebook, it [first] gets evaluated by an algorithm, but if the algorithm fails […] then that piece of horrific content goes to a person for evaluation,” Broussard said. “We need to recognize that ghost work is happening, that there are people who are operating these machines behind the scenes, and make better working conditions.”

Editorial, Opinion

University should not be financially debilitating

by The McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) is one of many university student unions taking part in Debt-Free Degree, a campaign organized by the University Students’ Council at Western University and the Undergraduates of Canadian Research-Intensive Universities coalition. The campaign’s goal is to advocate for financial accessibility within post-secondary institutions. According to its website, 54 per cent of Canadian graduates finish their degrees with student debt, and 45 per cent end up owing $25,000 or more. Student debt can be stressful and at times debilitating, and can impact things like one’s credit score. In turn, the campaign calls for doubling government investment in the Canada Student Grant program and changing the Canadian student loans grace period from six months to two years.

The statistics provided by the campaign are abhorrent, especially when social pressures paint university as necessary to succeed in one’s career, leaving students with seemingly no choice but to take on debt, which can be debilitating for those with or without parental support. This phenomenon should no longer be normalized. Therefore, McGill students should call for better government policies, including those proposed by Debt-Free Degree, and McGill must do more to make itself accessible to students regardless of their financial background.

Between tuition costs, extra fees in certain specialized programs, and the cost of rent, groceries, and other necessities, university is staggeringly unaffordable. While not mandatory in first year, McGill housing is typically seen as a rite of passage and generally costs far more than an average apartment in Montreal. All of these costs are on the rise—McGill’s recent international student tuition hike and rising costs of living in the city are indicative of an upward trend that threatens to force even more students into debt to finance their studies.

McGill’s complicity in this crisis goes beyond raising costs. On top of requiring students to pay exorbitant amounts of money to access the institution, the university also fails to provide students with sufficient means to ease their financial burden. The university’s scholarship opportunities almost exclusively reward those with extremely high grades.

Perhaps such high standards would be more permissible if McGill’s need-based initiatives offered more security, but this is not the case. Work study positions require students to be receiving all possible government aid, generally meaning that they have already taken on the highest possible debt level. Further, many scholarships and aid programs require students to have a certain GPA or take a certain number of classes to be eligible. All of these restrictions make accessing aid extremely difficult, and force students into precarious or emotionally taxing positions before they can receive support.

While Canadian tuition prices are comparatively less expensive than the United States’ exorbitant ones, this argument allows Canadian post-secondary institutions to justify education costs that are nevertheless inaccessible and unaffordable. For this reason, the success of the Debt-Free Degree campaign is crucial. Expanding awareness of the issue, especially when it comes to policymakers, is the first step, and the campaign’s proposed policy changes is a move in the right direction. 

However, achieving substantive long-term change requires a collective rethinking of the entire notion of student debt. It should not be normal for students to have to sacrifice financial security before they even start their careers to gain access to that career in the first place. This attitude is dangerous, and debt will continue to pile on unless governments and post-secondary institutions enact change. More radical policy proposals like universal student debt cancellation are dismissed as unrealistic, but popular support and government pressure can eventually make them a reality. 

It is not normal that so many must deal with overwhelming debt at such a young age. Students can benefit from demanding better from McGill and advocate for policies that help alleviate the financial burden of attending university. Students are more than just funding opportunities for post-secondary institutions, and it is time that policy reflects that. 

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