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Arts & Entertainment, Internet

Mark your calendars, Tanner Armstrong’s ‘Gay Agenda’ is taking over

by Deana Korsunsky on

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When Tanner Armstrong, U3 Arts, joined TikTok, he did not expect to build a following of over 54,000, let alone an online 2SLGBTQIA+ community. Yet, when a comedic video he posted this past August went viral, the idea of a “Gay Agenda,” initially just a shared Google Calendar of comedic fake events, swiftly evolved into a collaborative Google Drive. Now, the Gay Agenda, as it is known, provides a digital safe space for people of any sexual orientation and gender. 

What would become Armstrong’s first of many in his Gay Agenda videos series was initially intended to satirize a term that right-wing conservatives often use in their attempts to denigrate queer activism. After posting the video and login information to a Google calendar, Armstrong received comments from enthusiastic viewers, saying that they had contributed to it. To his surprise, Armstrong later found it laden with hundreds of events, from Sunday’s “Go to the gay coffee shop to drink ur gay iced coffee and meet other gays,” to Wednesday’s “Simp for equal rights.” 

Nonetheless, the Gay Agenda was not enough for TikTok’s zealous, queer creatives. Unbeknownst to Armstrong, his viewers began creating documents in the Gmail’s corresponding Google Drive. 

Beyond the initial collaborative calendar, the Google Drive contains a bevy of comical content, as well as helpful resources. The Drive is organized by folders including “Memes,” “Specific Sexualities,” and many more; the folders contain specific documents that range from book recommendations, to pen pal signups, to resources for 2SLGBTQIA+ members of different religions. 

“It’s a community,” Armstrong explained in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “It’s an avenue for people to express themselves, an opportunity to laugh and relate from queer humor and [the] different nuances there.”

Although the Gay Agenda began as a source of comedy, it has grown to be a safe haven for 2SLGBTQIA+  Tik Tok users around the world, offering educational resources, social connection with other members, links to members’ small businesses, and an overall atmosphere of self-acceptance. 

“I think that [the Gay Agenda] is such a tremendous opportunity to help so many people,” Armstrong said. “It’s reflected in the countless comments and DMs that I’ve gotten from people that are closeted, and are younger, and also from people that are in their 30s that have messaged me saying ‘Dang, I really wish I had this when I was a teenager.’” 

The resource also offers an “Advice” folder to guide individuals who are just beginning to explore their queer identity. 

“I think that [part of the popularity] goes back to […] sorting through [one’s] identity and trying to figure that out,” Armstrong said. “It’s such a daunting task on its own without the pressures from a conservative family, or other people’s opinions of you.” 

Despite the fact that any one of the 19,000 participants can edit or delete anothers’ Drive content, there have been no such instances, demonstrating a shared sense of trust amongst Gay Agenda members.

Armstrong—while incredibly thankful for the community he created—is careful to point out that his target audience still includes heterosexual and cisgender people.

“I want to be cognizant of being able to reach [out to] other people and try to incorporate different aspects into my [TikTok] content that aren’t exclusively for the [2SLGBTQIA+] community, but also [for] allies,” Armstrong said. “I think we have to have everybody at the table to have these conversations.”

While heteronormativity and homophobia persists, Armstrong’s Gay Agenda provides a much-needed a space for members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community to repose, create, and connect. The community reclaims and redefines the homophobic term “gay agenda,” transforming it into a welcoming space for empowerment and camaraderie. As Armstrong maintains the Drive and keeps his TikTok followers updated on its content, he exemplifies the power that social media has to connect and uplift passionate creatives. Today, Armstrong continues to grow the Gay Agenda—and with it, the confidence and verve of TikTok’s 2SLGBTQIA+ members.

All Gay Agenda info, including the Drive form, can be found on linktr.ee/__tannerjames

Student Life

Creating the baby zoomer generation

by Margaret Wdowiak on

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Zoom, a company that would have been unknown to many this time last year, has become a mainstay in our everyday lives. The COVID-19 pandemic transformed this little-known video conferencing application into a multi-billion dollar company, and for good reason: It offered an effective and simple video-call platform for workplaces and schools in desperate need of remote communication tools. To better understand Zoom’s phenomenal rise to the top, it is worth examining its beginnings. 

In 2012, long before mandatory online classes and virtual parties, a former Cisco employee named Eric Yuan created Zoom. Yuan left Cisco to begin the project that would become Zoom after Cisco failed to improve their web-based video conferencing platform, WebEx. The first version of Zoom was released in 2012, and by 2013 the application was hosting 5,550 calls per day. Set apart by its user-friendly interface and capacity to host 40 people in one call, Zoom’s innovative features distinguished it in a crowded market with little room for newcomers.

“Zoom worked on some issues of other video conference tools and offered a solution with high video and audio quality,” Anton Stiglic, seasonal lecturer at McGill’s School of Information Studies, wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “Zoom also offered certain features that made it particularly attractive, such as being able to set a background, commanding a meeting by being able to mute certain participants, a raise-the-hand feature, and many more.”

With these novel features, Zoom was initially able to upstage several of its strongest competitors, including Skype. However, Zoom’s true moment to shine would not come for another seven years.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom use has grown exponentially. Stuck in quarantine, many began using this software to stay virtually connected. Zoom’s biggest success, however, was its universal acceptance in schools and workplaces. 

Zoom has several features that support team collaboration, such as the Zoom Chat and easy integration with other leading workplace tools like Salesforce. In education, Zoom’s ability to facilitate live, online teaching while encouraging student engagement has been met with praise. Unlike the former poster child of video conferencing technologies Skype––which was hard to install, buggy, and prone to spam calls––Zoom is much more user-friendly.

Unsurprisingly, Zoom’s meteoric rise came with serious downsides. The application faced privacy concerns and online harassment issues.

“Firstly, there were a couple of vulnerabilities found in various Zoom software clients exposing peoples computers and devices,” Stiglic wrote. “There were issues with Zoom’s privacy policy, and misinformation [spread] about what Zoom can do with your information, messages, and audio. There were also problems with the encryption they implemented, which was not as secure as they claimed it was.”

One phenomenon emerged, known as “Zoombombing.” Individuals with malicious intent began overtaking public video chats and displaying graphic content or racist comments, leading some institutional clients to switch to other conferencing softwares. Zoom eventually took measures to rectify these issues.

“Zoom did take all of these issues in hand and they have put serious effort into solving them,” Stiglic wrote. “They have tightened and clarified their security policy [and] re-architected their solution to offer real end-to-end encryption, including for the free version. Zoom also created a ‘waiting room’ feature for additional participants and requires a password to enter a meeting.”

Some security issues unfortunately remain, including susceptibility to certain malware programs. Zoom’s ease of use continues to make it a prime target for internet trolls and hackers. 

In light of these security concerns, Stiglic believes that in order for Zoom to retain its momentum, the company must continue to patch bugs in its software and offer new, innovative features to aid university lectures and business meetings.

“There is a lot of competition in the field of videoconferencing solutions,” Stiglic said. “Only time will tell which ones will [survive]. But one thing is certain: The survivors will need to take security and privacy seriously in order to offer a quality solution.”

Research Briefs, Science & Technology

Living on the edge: Protecting endangered plant species in the Canadian North

by Madison Mclauchlan on

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From the boreal forests of Newfoundland to the majestic Douglas firs of British Columbia, Canada boasts some of the most astounding plant life the world has to offer. Yet, Canada’s flora are becoming increasingly threatened by climate and land-use change. Conservation biology is an important area of scientific research that recommends strategies to conserve and protect wildlife in the face of these challenges. However, problems arise when scientists lack the data necessary to determine which conservation efforts to pursue. 

A recent comprehensive study released by McGill’s Hargreaves Lab explores the extent to which at-risk plant species are under-represented in conservation research. A critical factor in this study is the location of species within their native ranges, the geographic region where a particular plant type can be found during its lifetime. Since Canada stretches so far north, many species are found in the most extreme conditions that they can withstand. This peripherality is defined as the occupation of 20 per cent or less of a plant’s total range and has become a point of contention in conservation policy. 

“A species at its range edge has two options,” Pascale Caissy, a Hargreaves Lab alumna and one of the lead authors of the paper, said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “It is either really well-adapted to harsher conditions, or it’s doomed and cannot cope. That’s why there is so much controversy around protecting [range-edge species].”

Using spatial analysis while reviewing the literature, the study found that over 75 per cent of threatened plant species in Canada are considered peripheral. Notably, the plants in most dire need of habitat protection are found within the smallest portion of their range. Researchers suggest that the prevalence of at-risk species living near or within the edges of their range is especially troubling, and requires increased attention from conservation groups.

For years, plant biologists have posited that range-edge populations are important guardians of biodiversity, as they may acquire special traits that other members of the same species do not possess. As the climate crisis intensifies and Canada’s southern regions continue to warm, these plant taxa are left in a precarious position as they begin to shift northward in an attempt to remain within their preferred temperature conditions. 

“We don’t know how often range-edge populations are critical in climate-driven range shifts globally, or in Canada,” Dr. Anna Hargreaves, co-author of the study, wrote in an email to the Tribune. “We don’t have the data, and that is one of the most important points the paper makes.” 

The lack of data on endangered plant species makes it more difficult for organizations such as the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) to determine the threat status of many native plants. According to the study, only 3.7 per cent of at-risk plant species in Canada have their habitat area protected. 

The limited research into endangered plant species is surprising, given the praise that Canada receives for its animal conservation efforts. Taxonomic bias, the tendency of research to be focused on well-known, congenial organisms, puts plants at a disadvantage—especially if they are at their range edge. For example, the at-risk marbled murrelet is featured in more than 50 scientific studies, while many peripheral plants receive little attention in scientific publications. 

“I think people easily relate to animals and their stories, whereas plants live out their life on a different timescale than people, so we don’t always relate to them,” Hargreaves wrote. 

Neglecting smaller, peripheral plants because they are not as beloved as polar bears or whales leaves scientists with an incomplete picture of our ecosystems. Yet, nature does not exist in a vacuum; if the plant life essential to ecosystem function is not protected, then the entire community is put at risk. 

“Conservation is a social, value-based decision, not a scientific one,” Hargreaves wrote. “Scientists can estimate how species are doing and what would happen if we lost them, but we as Canadians have to decide what we value.” 

Football, Sports

Know Your Athlete: Dimitrios Sinodinos

by Adam Menikefs on

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Often regarded as one of the most important positions in sports, the quarterback of a football team must command a roster full of players eager to display their athleticism on the gridiron. McGill’s fourth-year starting quarterback Dimitrios Sinodinos strives to use his leadership role to build a better team. 

“In the context of football, leadership is incredibly important,” Sinodos said in an interview with The McGill Tribune. “Leadership is all about making everyone around you better, not just improving yourself. It’s easy to just focus on improving yourself, but the real challenge is making your teammates commit to the same standards.”

Sinodinos took on the starting position during his second year at McGill, and having gained that valuable experience early in his career has helped him and his team perform better. Despite this, he knows that his improvement going forward will be instrumental to the team’s success. A key part of constant improvement is modeling both his on-field play and his off-the-field behaviour after successful NFL signal callers. 

“Without a doubt, a quarterback whose leadership I try to model [my own] after is Tom Brady,” Sinodinos said. “He is the definition of making everyone around him better. He inspires everyone with his work ethic and confidence. A quarterback that I look up to for his on-field play is Russell Wilson. He has the tools to extend plays and make any throw from inside and outside the pocket”

Listed as 5-11, Sinodinos is shorter than the average quarterback, but he does not let his height impact his confidence and future aspirations. Sinodos hopes to participate in the CFL combine following his time at McGill. Sinodos looks to Russell Wilson as inspiration for someone similar in stature.

“I look up to him because he exhibits sustained greatness while being largely underrated his entire career and overcoming the stigma against Quarterbacks that are not above 6-2,” Sinodinos said.

The off-season is a critical time for players to improve their skills, strength, and intelligence by weight lifting, studying film, and practicing with teammates. Unfortunately, for Sinodinos and his teammates, the 2020 off-season was full of challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Sinodinos adapted well to the obstacles. 

“Personally, the pandemic has not hindered my development at all,” Sinodinos said. “My father and I decided to invest in a home gym that I regularly used to perform team workouts.”

Social distancing guidelines even proved advantageous for Sinodinos and his teammates. 

 “Football fields were empty, making it easy to run and throw with either teammates or a quarterback coach three to four times a week,” Sinodinos said. “Additionally, I, as well as my teammates, have taken the opportunity to have more football meetings with our coaches via Zoom to ensure our football IQ stays sharp.”

Despite the time apart from each other and the cancellation of the 2020 RSEQ season, Sinodinos is confident that the team will remain tight-knit. 

“The word family is indicative of the relationship of our team,” Sinodinos said. “We are a veteran team where most of us have been together for more than three years. We also try to make the rookies feel welcome every season by inviting them to extra workouts and events.”

With the extra time to pursue other interests over the summer, Sinodinos enjoyed taking free online courses, learning about new programming languages, and learning about android phone application development. These courses have increased both his interest and understanding in his electrical and computer engineering major at McGill. 

As Sinodinos enters his final undergraduate year working towards an electrical and computer engineering degree, he plans to apply to McGill’s graduate school for a master’s in electrical and computer engineering after he graduates in Winter 2021. He believes this will help with his future employment opportunities, while allowing him to continue playing for McGill’s football team.

Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

‘Sisters, Dreams and Variations’ brings a gust of Icelandic artistry

by Pascal Hogue on

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There’s a reason why Neil Armstrong decided to spend part of his summer in 1967 salmon-fishing in Iceland—the place doesn’t feel like it belongs on Earth. Iceland is a territory of pure grit, where volcanoes constantly spew white smoke and purple hues of Alaska lupine pepper the landscape. When I visited the country in 2018, it felt alien, like standing on a giant meteor that had crash-landed smack in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. 

In more than one way, Sisters, Dreams and Variations brings this Icelandic extraterrestrial aura to the big screen. The documentary follows multidisciplinary artists and sisters Tyr Jami and Jasa Baka, a pair of budding artists in Montreal. Beginning in 2014, the film tracks their move to Iceland, their great-grandmother’s home, in 2018. Their journey is depicted as a pastiche of vintage family photographs, childish drawings, and extravagant real-life scenes that fully embrace their artistic whims.  

Jasa Baka is a painter, sculptor, and fashion designer with a boundless and prolific creative output. Swaggering around the Plateau with cat-eye glasses and purple lipstick, Baka struts from one art gallery to the next, painstakingly trying to make a name for herself in the Montreal art scene. Her life and work teem with vibrant outfits, cutesy dollhouses, and random colourful knick-knacks. Tyr Jami, a visual artist and musician, splits her time between giving cello lessons and playing every available gig with her folk band Syngja, whether on a weeknight at Casa del Popolo, for a local summer festival, or on a Montreal morning show. The cinematography beautifully captures the sisters’ brimming imagination: Scenes of mundane, daily life are sprinkled with Baka’s playful doodles and refreshed by Jami’s whimsical cello melodies and crystal clear, early-90s Björk vocals. Their creative visions radiate in Montreal’s early-spring doldrums.

But, there is a sense that the sisters lack something in Montreal—not solely because their great-grandmother, Ingibjörg, whose Icelandic lullabies are immortalized on cassette tapes, lulls her great-granddaughters back to their ancestral land. When Jami and Baka finally do visit Iceland, their artistic idiosyncrasies find their echo amid the craggy hills and lonely pastures. The result is an enchanting marriage of nature and craft, myth and rubble, and flurries of phantasmagorical illusions. 

After a Friday night screening at the Cinéma du Musée, director Catherine Legault commented on her film’s intentions.

“I wanted to show [the sisters] through many different perspectives and also show them as artists, what is the life of artists, which is not always easy in Montreal, despite their talent,” Legault explained. “But for them, it is an integral part of their life. It is in all these small aspects of their lives that their art unveils itself. Iceland is an inspiration, but it is not what defines them. And when we got to Iceland, after having planted all the seeds, the idea was to make [their artistry] blossom […] now that we had the keys to understand where they came from and how their style came about.”

Legault couldn’t have spoken more truthfully. If Jami and Baka struggle to find a source of fulfillment in their adopted city of Montreal, they discover it among the geysers of their ancestral home. Sisters, Dreams and Variations is a beautiful depiction of their journey, fusing family and art, while paying homage to a small island that leaves grand impressions.

Legault’s quote was translated from French by the author.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Jasa Baka was the violinist of Singya, and that Tyr Jami was a visual artist. Baka is a visual artist, and Jami was the cellist of Syngya. The Tribune regrets this error.

Student Life

Business meets style at Fashion Spectrum Competition

by Maya Mau on

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Fashion Spectrum, Canada’s only inter-university academic competition that focusses on fashion, is underway. Fashion Spectrum welcomes students from four Montreal university management schools—McGill, Concordia, ESG UQÀM, and HEC Montréal—to work with local fashion companies. In creating these partnerships between business students and established industry professionals, Fashion Spectrum aims to provide crucial solutions to modern fashion industry problems with the help of young minds. Past editions have tackled human resource reforms and explored traditional modes of entrepreneurship; this year’s edition focusses on adapting to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Comprised entirely by students, the 2020-2021 executive team brought together students from the four core universities. Among them is Clarisse Dugelay, U3 Management, who is studying strategic management with a concentration in finance. This is Dugelay’s second year in the competition, and she is the only McGill student on the committee. She is currently serving as the Fashion Spectrum Vice-President of Communications. Dugelay jumped at the chance to be involved with Fashion Spectrum.

“This position in communications represented a unique opportunity for me to grow both personally, by working on a subject that interests me deeply in a unique case competition, and professionally,” Dugelay said. 

One benefit of participating in Fashion Spectrum for business students such as Dugelay is the opportunity to synthesize vastly different interests while taking on a leadership position within the program. For Dugelay, this allowed her to hone her competitive side while engaging in the creative aspects of fashion merchandising. Over the course of the past two years, Fashion Spectrum has been an incredible experience for Dugelay, and the benefits have extended far beyond the competition.

 “My favorite [part of] the event was the opportunity to meet students and established professionals that come from different backgrounds, yet share the same motivation, passion, and drive,” Dugelay said. “Today, thanks to my experience during [Fashion Spectrum], I am more confident during presentations [in class]. Being a native French speaker [at an English university] and having a lot of presentations to conduct in my business classes, this was really an important [experience] for me.”

Indeed, networking is a highlight for the 80 students selected to participate. For three months, they will collaborate with each other and will be supported by a mentor who is usually a professional, teacher, or consultant. In addition, they will work closely with some of the 20 local companies who are part of the program, which include La Vie en Rose, Mackage, Lolë, Birks, and Gorski. The wide variety of products that these companies develop and market give participants a breadth of creative freedoms, along with a large array of resources.

In January 2021, the participating students’ journeys will culminate by presenting their cases studies to a jury of panelists. Though the competition is friendly and everyone involved ultimately gains invaluable experiences, there still are winners. Prizes go to the individuals who were the most involved and showed growth over the course of the competition and the teams that worked well together to come up with the most innovative, ethical, and sustainable ideas.

The upcoming edition marks the third annual Fashion Spectrum competition, but its organizational structure has been revamped from its two preceding iterations. Rather than seeing the current COVID-19 pandemic as an obstacle, Fashion Spectrum has embraced it. In addition to ensuring that all social distancing measures are properly maintained, the competition developed the Fashion Forward online crisis program, which encourages participants to imagine possibilities for the fashion industry in a post-COVID-19 world. This adjustment demonstrates solidarity both among students, and between the university and fashion communities in difficult times. In essence, this collaboration is ultimately the core of the competition.

McGill, News

McGill Alumnus Steven Pinker presents McGill’s 2020 Beatty Lecture online

by Tasmin Chu on

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Cognitive scientist and linguist Steven Pinker presented this year’s Beatty Lecture to the McGill community and the general public on Sept. 25. Every year, the Beatty Lecture brings leading thinkers to McGill to present a public talk on a topic of their choice. 

During the online lecture, which drew in nearly 500 live viewers on Youtube, Pinker discussed the concept of human progress and argued that the human condition has been improving overall. Pinker attributed this phenomenon to values from the Age of Enlightenment such as reason, science, and humanism. 

Pinker is the 90th presenter to give a Beatty Lecture at McGill. The lectureship was established in 1952 following a $100,000 donation to McGill University by Dr. Henry A. Beatty. The annual lecture honours Beatty’s late brother Sir Edward Beatty, who was a president of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Pinker attained the status of a public intellectual after writing multiple critically acclaimed books on science, psychology, and history. In his Beatty Lecture, he expanded upon ideas published in his 2018 book, Enlightenment Now. 

Citing statistics that show increasing life expectancies, the fall of extreme poverty, and the decline of slavery, Pinker argued that the human condition has markedly improved over the last 300 years. 

“Slavery used to be practiced in every civilization,” Pinker said. “We are living in an unprecedented 40-year period in world history, where slavery is not legal anywhere on Earth.”

Pinker claimed that despite the economic and social devastation caused by COVID-19, it remains essential to appreciate the worldwide response to contain and study the virus in the 21st century. Comparing COVID-19 to previous pandemics, Pinker pointed out it took 15 years to find an effective treatment for HIV and 350 years to find a vaccine for rubella. 

“We identified the pathogen within days of discovery of the epidemic,” Pinker said. “Currently, about 100 vaccines are in development [….] It’s important to realize what an advance this is in a historical context.” 

Clara Saliba,U3 Arts, attended the lecture but was disappointed that Pinker’s talk did not focus on his research in linguistics. She also found aspects of the talk oversimplified. 

“I do agree that the world has progressed, [in the sense] that it’s less violent, safer, a better place to live in than it was a few years ago,” Saliba said. “[But] I found the focus on Enlightenment values and humanism very Eurocentric.” 

Despite Pinker’s popularity, his theory of human progress remains controversial. Following the publication of Enlightenment Now, some critics found fault with the quality of Pinker’s scholarship, citing his historical understanding of the Enlightenment and his claim that countries reduce pollution as they grow more prosperous.  

Pinker has also faced criticism for his cultural views. In July of 2020, hundreds of scholars signed a letter calling for the removal of Pinker as a distinguished academic fellow of the Linguistic Society of America, citing some of his previous statements on racial justice. Among them was one tweet from 2015 in which Pinker wrote, “Police don’t kill blacks disproportionately.” 

During the Q&A session of the talk, an anonymous audience member asked Pinker to weigh in on the “Take James McGill Down” campaign—a student-led initiative demanding the removal of  the statue of James McGill from campus, the founder of McGill who also enslaved people.

“In terms of pulling down statues, I think that’s a product of miseducation,” Pinker said. “We tend to underestimate the situation, the context, the historical period, so we tend to think that bad things are done by bad people. That is bad psychology.”

Daniel Horen Greenford, a Ph.D. candidate in Geography, Planning, and Environment at Concordia University and student of McGill’s Economics for the Anthropocene program, felt that Pinker’s optimistic beliefs are incompatible with the growing climate crisis. 

Greenford, who previously criticized Pinker’s scholarly assessment of climate change in the Montreal Gazette, doubted Pinker’s beliefs that technological leaps will halt climate change. Greenford argued that Pinker’s scholarship defended the status quo. 

“His main thing is cherry-picking things that help push for the narrative that we should stay the course,” Greenford said. “You can’t solve the climate problem without having a more serious restructuring of the economic system.” 

Campus Spotlight, Student Life

McGill’s Indigenous Awareness Weeks return virtually

by Wendy Zhao on

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Song and dance filled McGill’s Lower Field again on Sept. 18, as the First Peoples’ House’s (FPH) Virtual Pow Wow launched the university’s 10th Annual Indigenous Awareness Weeks (IAW), focussed on showcasing Indigenous cultures and traditional perspectives on wellness. Every September since 2001, Indigenous community members across Canada have united at McGill to contribute to the Pow Wow ritual. Previously two weeks long, the events of IAW 2020 were shortened to take place over the span of under a week to adapt to the virtual limitations. 

Most people watched the Pow Wow live from FPH’s social media accounts, while others gathered at a safe distance from one another around the performance on Lower Field and donned masks. The Red Tail Spirit Singers drum group accompanied dancers of all generations, including Don Barnaby, Marian Snow, and Ray Deer and his family. Basked in sunlight, Barnaby addressed the audience. 

“It was supposed to rain, but the Creators said, ‘You know what, they need to go out and put some medicine out there, so I’m not going to literally rain on their parade,’” Barnaby said.

Behind the dancers, the Hiawatha Wampum Belt flag was raised on the McCall-MacBain Arts Building to recognize the land that McGill occupies as the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabeg nations. The flag emphasized the university’s growing, but still limited, space for Indigenous expressions. 

In his virtual welcome to the Pow Wow, Christopher Manfredi, McGill’s Provost and Vice-Principal (Academic), spoke on the importance of celebrating Indigenous cultures. 

“While [this] cluster of events each September is an important opportunity to welcome Indigenous community members to our university to share in celebration and to raise awareness of Indigenous teachings, cultures, and customs, we are also working hard at ensuring that Indigenous experiences, forms of knowledge, and ways of teaching are integral to the academic fabric of the university,” Manfredi said. 

The final event of this year’s IAW was a virtual discussion on Sept. 24 featuring Healers Geraldine and Mike Standup. The presenters shared their traditional knowledge on the connection between mind and body, highlighting how this bond can improve overall well-being. With the year’s many uncertainties, this wisdom comes at a time when achieving inner reflection and peace is crucial but difficult. 

The team at the FPH have worked to facilitate the expression of distinctly interactive Indigenous cultures through the limitations of a screen. Terry David Young, McGill’s Indigenous Student Advisor, recognizes both the constraints and opportunities created by this new online reality and describes the connection created by face-to-face and hand-to-hand exchanges that is integral to Indigenous culture.

“For Indigenous peoples, there’s always a component of social interaction that’s a part of our cultures,” Young said. “[It’s] a very interactive, hands-on experience [of] dancing, singing, and creating.” 

The loss of these tangible, mutual forms of connection is especially difficult for new Indigenous students at McGill. In previous years, the Pow Wow provided a celebratory space for Indigenous students to feel recognized and welcomed. With this event shifted to an impersonal cyberspace, Young mourns the inability to meet new and returning students face-to-face. 

Despite their constraints, however, virtual platforms have allowed the FPH to engage with and learn from people they would not have been able to before. 

“We’ve accessed Elders from across the country,” Young said. “Adapting online has both widened and limited our reach.”

The image of community may look different for the FPH this year—a grid of faces on Zoom, a sparse Lower Field once crowded with students now dispersed across the country—but moving forward, their team plans to continue expanding the potential of virtual methods to express Indigeneity and nurture friendships among community members. 

“I look forward to next year,” Brady said in his welcome to the live Pow Wow. “Hopefully things will be better, things will be changed, and there’ll be more people because we dance with the people.” 

Students can keep updated on FPH’s events and programs through their social media or website.

 

Campus Spotlight, Student Life

Campus Spotlight: #TakeJamesDown

by ET Wu on

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Anti-Black racism at McGill is institutionalized, and the work of Black student activists is vital in demanding systemic changes on campus. A summer of Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the continued police brutality and murders of Black people have brought increased visibility to Black activism around the globe, including at McGill. The Take James Down movement, along with the continued efforts of McGill’s Black Students’ Network (BSN), is pressuring the university’s administration to reconsider their flimsy commitment to racial justice, specifically in addressing anti-Black racism. 

The Take James McGill Down movement was co-organized by Mohammed Odusanya, Sarah Ragab, and Ayo Ogunremi, alongside other volunteers. The movement’s letter to McGill’s Board of Governors, entitled “Enough is Enough,” outlines McGill’s failures to adequately serve its Black community, highlights the university’s negligence towards funding a proper Black or Africana Studies program and condemns the administration’s continued refusal to critically examine James McGill’s history of enslaving Black and Indigenous peoples. Further, McGill has continued to celebrate James McGill’s legacy without acknowledging the enslaved and oppressed people whose land and labour were essential to the founding of the university. 

Among the movement’s demands is the removal of the statue of James McGill near the Roddick gates, and that the administration properly address its namesakes’ history. McGill enslaved at least five people and voted against the abolition of slavery.

Odusanya called on the McGill administration to increase representation of Black people in McGill’s faculties, and make meaningful amends for its role in upholding racist practices. 

“#TakeJamesDown [is] calling for McGill University to meaningfully respond and recognize its role in perpetuating anti-Blackness and excluding Black students, staff and faculty from leadership roles in this university,” Odusanya wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune. “The statue is a symbol of the university’s valorization of certain people and histories at the expense [of] Black people.” 

Despite the movements’ efforts and public support, Odusanya believes that the administration has been passive.

“In response to a CBC Montreal interview we did in August, McGill said they would not be removing the statue, amongst other things,” Odysanya wrote.  

The administration’s refusal to remove the statue sends a conflicting message: Despite championing a commitment to equity, they have ignored clear statements from their Black student population on how to be more equitable. 

BSN has been involved in the oversight of the Take James Down movement and organized the Aug. 1 protest for the removal of the statue. Currently, they are focussed on reiterating the demands expressed in the Take James Down open letter to the administration. Iyanu Soyege, BSN Vice-President Political, emphasized the importance of recognizing the university’s colonial past. 

“We have come to a moment in time where it is imperative to question the symbols that are upheld and what they mean to marginalized ethnic and racial groups at McGill and in the larger Canadian society,” Soyege wrote in an email to The McGill Tribune.

Founded in 1970, the BSN provides valuable resources and platforms for McGill’s Black communities. For decades, their advocacy work has gone largely unaddressed by the administration. This failure to respond to its Black students’ needs has highlighted the McGill administration’s disinterest in dismantling institutional racism within the university. 

“The BSN has been advocating for different things such as the increased recruitment of Black students from Montreal, the creation of a Black Studies [or] Africana Studies department and increased Black faculty [members] at McGill,” Soyege wrote. “Most of these demands are not new.  Considering that most of these demands have not been fulfilled, it is reasonable to surmise that the administration has historically failed to take the BSN’s requests seriously.” 

Students can support the movement by signing TJD’s letter through this form. 

Divest McGill Illustration
McGill, News

PGSS panel argues for a fossil-free future for McGill

by Margaret Askey on

More in McGill:

On Sept. 23, the Post Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS) and their Environment Committee hosted an online discussion and panel titled “Divestment from Fossil Fuels at McGill.” The panel presented arguments in favour of McGill divesting from fossil fuels, examined what divestment might look like, and delved into the broader implications of divestment.

The three panelists at the event were Dr. Greg Mikkelson, a former professor at McGill who resigned in Jan. 2020 in response to the administration’s refusal to divest from fossil fuels, as well as Dr. Jen Gobby from Climate Justice Montreal, and Talia Martz-Oberlander of Divest McGill.

Martz-Oberlander, a graduate student in experimental physics, presented on behalf of Divest McGill. The organization was founded in 2012 and is composed of students, faculty, and staff at McGill who are calling for the university to withdraw their financial investments in fossil fuel corporations. Martz-Oberlander described Divest McGill’s goals and demands to the audience of 25 individuals. 

“Divest McGill is solidarity-minded, aiming to support Indigenous land defenders,” Martz-Oberlander said. “[We want McGill to] withdraw direct holdings from the top 200 fossil fuel companies, as ranked by reserves of oil, coal, and natural gas. [We call for] immediate divestment from direct holdings in TC Energy, in solidarity with Wet’suwet’en peoples.”

Martz-Oberlander continued to highlight the impacts of McGill’s financial investments in the fossil fuel industry on its community. 

“It’s not just that we have money invested,” Martz-Oberlander said. “This is someone’s home, this is someone’s access to their culture and their people, [threatened by companies] that we’re directly investing in.”

The panellists also criticized McGill’s decision to pursue “decarbonization” rather than divest from fossil fuels completely. 

“The problem with decarbonization is that it directly supports the fossil fuel industry in shirking its responsibilities for climate change and the damage that they’re wreaking with the harms of its products and operations,” Martz-Oberlander said. “Suncor […] is invested at the most primary level in having fossil fuels be burnt, but under ‘decarbonization,’ McGill is still allowed to invest in them.”

Gobby spoke on behalf of Climate Justice Montreal (CJM), a grass-roots organization founded in 2009. CJM pursues climate justice and stands in solidarity with Indigenous communities through direct action and education. Gobby reiterated the importance of committing to taking meaningful action against climate change.

“Divestment is absolutely necessary at this scale and in these institutions if we are going to address climate change in any meaningful way,” Gobby said. “The kind of change necessary is unprecedented.”

Gobby also challenged the notion that investment is a passive enterprise, arguing that through decarbonization, McGill fails to adequately address the environmental impacts of the fossil fuel industry. 

“What [the administration is] doing is making this statement that being invested in an industry that is killing people and putting the future of their students at risk [is] natural and inevitable, instead of seeing it as a social construct meant to benefit the ruling class,” Gobby said.

Along with Martz-Oberlander and Gobby, Mikkelson condemned McGill’s inaction, emphasizing that the administration has failed to fulfill their moral obligations.

“What should make all universities divest are […] moral, political, and financial arguments,” Mikkelson said. “It’s just deeply morally repugnant, morally outrageous, and morally unacceptable to claim credit for trying to reduce your own fossil fuel consumption, but at the same time bank on or otherwise promote the expansion of fossil fuel production.” 

Speaking to the importance of immediate action, Mikkelson drew attention to the fact that climate change is already well under way. 

“It’s happening, we’re in the thick of it,” Mikkelson  said. “It’s only going to get worse unless we deeply transform what we’re doing, and deeply transform our society.”

Addressing the concept of decarbonization that Martz-Oberlander brought up earlier in the event,  Mikkelson shared his thoughts on McGill’s decarbonization efforts.

“I think there’s nothing wrong with decarbonization, I just don’t think that what McGill is doing [is enough],”  Mikkelson said. “Because, as [Martz-Oberlander] pointed out, according to the definition [of decarbonization] that McGill is using, they are only counting the greenhouse gas emissions created by a company in producing their product. But they are completely letting companies off the hook for what happens to their product afterwards.”

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