Half Moon Run (Montreal)
Indie rockers Half Moon Run struck it big this year with a third row mention on the Osheaga lineup poster. The band’s biggest performance challenge will be proving that they are not Walk The Moon.
Grimes (Montreal)
Ex-McGill student Claire Boucher is returning to the Osheaga stage high off the success of Art Angels, which topped more than a couple Best of 2015 lists. Expect electro-pop and a signature, endearing lisp from the artist to whom Pitchfork refers as “a human zeitgeist.”
Coeur de Pirate (Montreal)
The francophone favourite, Coeur de Pirate, is sure to woo crowds with her soothing lyrics. More than that, if she plays her 2008 classic “comme des Enfants,” she’ll steal the throwback show.
Wolf Parade (Montreal)
After a five-year hiatus, this indie band returns to Osheaga for the first time since 2006. Since their edgier sound has largely fallen out of style in the indie scene, their return is much welcomed.
Kaytranada (Montreal)
The Haitian-Canadian DJ brings a welcome twist to the hip-hop electronic genre. Given that he’s 23 years old and already working with Rick Rubin, he’s a must-see for all recent college grads contemplating life choices and the student loan debt that comes with them.
The Barr Brothers (Montreal)
In a way, The Barr Brothers are the ideal mid-day festival band—laid back enough to give tired festival-goers a bit of a break, but never too laid back. Their acoustic arrangements are simple and elegant, and always build up to something beautiful.
Charlotte Cardin (Montreal)
Newcomer Charlotte Cardin played her first show outside of Canada just this week. She will bring a classic franco-jazz sound to her performance at Osheaga, something everyone can sway along with.
Caveboy (Montreal)
It wouldn’t be Osheaga without a smattering of indie-dream-pop. Thankfully, Caveboy’s version of this elusive genre is actually emotive, joyous, and fun to dance to.
HAUTE (Montreal)
Affectionately nicknamed “Baby Kade” by his teammates, Kade Wist entered McGill at only 17 years old, making him the youngest swimmer on the McGill swim team and in the RSEQ. The 5’11, 160-pound native of Calgary managed to capture eight race victories over the course of four Quebec Cup meets, swimming butterfly and freestyle. Wist was also an invaluable member on relay squads, earning McGill several podium finishes.
Wist qualified for CIS Nationals in the 100m butterfly and 200m butterfly events, and while at Nationals broke his personal best in the 100m butterfly by 0.7 seconds to qualify for the B-final, ultimately placing 8th. He also qualified for the 200m butterfly final, placing 9th.
Wist is one of seven McGill qualifiers for the Canadian Olympic team trials in anticipation of the 2016 Rio summer Olympics. At qualifiers, he’ll be swimming the 100m butterfly and 200m butterfly. With the pedigree of former McGill and Olympic swimmer Andrea Nugent, a promising start to his McGill career, and three to four more years with the Redmen, Wist is positioned to become the backbone of the Redmen swim team.
Olivia Atkinson
Olivia Atkinson, a 19-year-old freshman from Toronto Ontario, has been a flash of bright young talent in the Martlet women’s hockey team this year. At 5’6”, Atkinson brought physical prowess to the forward unit and developed her scoring ability while playing on the same line as 2014 Olympic gold medalist, Melodie Daoust.
Atkinson’s versatility as a forward gives her a foundation to be a strong presence and leader on a Martlet hockey team that’s welcoming nine rookies next year.
Atkinson dressed in all but one of the Martlet’s 40 games this season, tallying seven goals and eight assists for a total of 15 points overall, including a valiant two goal effort against the Montreal Carabins in November. Her efforts helped lead the women’s hockey team to a second place finish in the RSEQ, and a berth to Nationals in Calgary.
Atkinson’s on-ice skill is compounded by her work ethic off the ice in the weight room and on the track. With an unrelenting desire for excellence and the breadth of skill she adds to the hockey team, Atkinson will continue to develop into a force over her next few years with Martlet hockey.
Athletes of the Year
Samuel Labrecque
Senior Redmen hockey defenceman Samuel Labrecque continued to impress in his second season at McGill since transferring from NCAA team Clarkson Golden Knights, earning his second consecutive McGill Tribune male Athlete-of-the-year. This season, the Granby, Quebec-native and CIS All-Canadian was the highest scoring rearguard in the CIS and came third among all players in goals. He also topped the CIS in power play goals and led the Redmen to a 25-16-0 record this season.
The left-handed economics student earned the title of OUA Defenceman-of-the-year and set a McGill single-season record for points scored by a blueliner with a massive 44 on the season—16 goals and 28 assists. Labrecque was truly vital to the Redmen’s offence this season, being involved in 37.9 per cent of the team’s 116 goals.
Helena Reinfels
In her last year with the Martlet track and field team, pentathlete Helena Reinfels achieved personal goals and broke league records thanks to her dedication and training. The 5’10” senior won a silver medal in the pentathlon at the CIS Championships with a score of 3686 points. The previous year, Reinfels finished ninth in the pentathlon despite having no experience in the shot-put or high jump, which are elements integral to the event. She currently holds the RSEQ record score for the pentathlon. Reinfels also competes in sprinting events, hurdles, and long jump. In addition to the pentathlon, she also qualified for the CIS Championships in the 300m sprint, hurdles, and long jump–electing to compete in the pentathlon and 300m sprint.
Reinfels’ silver medal in the pentathlon was the highest podium finish by the track and field Martlets at a CIS meet since 2005 and the best finish of an individual McGill track athlete since 2003. She also broke the McGill record for the pentathlon twice over – the first time at the McGill Team Challenge in January, and then again, breaking her own record at the CIS meet.
Teams of the Year
Redmen Lacrosse
The Redmen Lacrosse team had a season for the ages this year. Going undefeated in the Canadian University Field Lacrosse Association (CUFLA) regular season and playoffs, the Redmen defeated the Western Mustangs 15-11 in the Baggataway Cup to win their first title since 2012 and the second in the program’s history. Five players earned All-Star status, with William Waesche named the league’s top goaltender, Connor Goodwin the top midfielder, and Paul Rakoczy the top defenceman. Long stick midfielder Quinton Bradley and defensive midfielder Bohe Hosking joined them as CUFLA All-Stars.
“It’s really exciting, mission accomplished,” said 13-year veteran Head Coach Tim Murdoch. “To go undefeated, now that I reflect on it, is almost more of a feat than winning the championship itself. Our theme developed by the captains this year was ‘As one’ and we literally took that to heart.”
This was the fourth season in a row that McGill reached the final and will see many seniors graduate who played a role in each of those campaigns. Overall, the Redmen will lose 12 players to graduation this year, including all four co-captains.
Martlet Basketball
The Martlet Basketball team completed its fifth straight year of domination in the RSEQ, once again taking home the RSEQ Championship Trophy after going (22-2) in the regular season. Though the team entered the CIS National Championship as the No.1 seed and with the best defensive record of any team, they failed to place in the tournament.
Despite this loss in the CIS, the Martlets still proved throughout the regular season that they were the team to beat. This powerhouse has been dutifully developed by Head Coach Ryan Thorne, who has just completed his 13th year with the team, and was crowned the 2016 CIS Coach-of-the-Year.
Thorne’s skill as a coach is easily matched by his team’s prowess. In their final season, co-captains Mariam Sylla and Dianna Ros were excellent on court all season, supported by former NCAA player Alex Kiss-Rusk, who was awarded All-Canadian honours this year. Even with the loss of Sylla and Ros, fans should look forward to a sixth consecutive RSEQ victory next season given that the team is stacked with strong rookie players—including Gladys Hakizimana, who received CIS All-Rookie honours—prepared to take the team back to Nationals.
Project Consent shows us how to tell it like it is
In Project Consent’s new videos, dancing, laughing, and whistling genitalia tell us without a doubt that If it isn’t yes, it’s no. It might seem ridiculous that mature adults would need dancing, animated body parts to explain a rather serious issue, but although consent is commonly talked about, collective society still has a lot of progress to make. Recent high profile media cases, such as accusations against Kesha’s producer, Dr. Luke, and former CBC radio host, Jian Ghomeshi—in which both Ghomeshi and Dr. Luke were found to be not guilty of sexual assault—illustrate why we need to keep talking about consent. In response to the continued presence of sexual assault on university campuses, including McGill’s, campus initiatives like Rez Project and Consent McGill are presently working to promote consent; however, results haven’t been achieved on or off campus. Project Consent’s videos might seem silly, redundant, or overly simplistic, but this is exactly why we should embrace them.
The ongoing search to find the perfect metaphor for consent has no lack of source material: Be it a cup of tea, poutine, a bad haircut, or even pizza toppings, there are endless ways to illustrate consent. Of course, most people understand that you shouldn’t force a cup of tea on your houseguest—never mind your unconscious houseguest.
But while goofy and creative metaphors are effective at catching public attention and sparking discourse, the problem is that they are still only metaphors. Sometimes, metaphors can distract from the fundamental messages they are supposed to convey, and can make a serious issue seem like something as trivial as pizza toppings. Project Consent knows that if people are going to continue to seriously address the issue of consent, they need to talk about it as it is. We can no longer afford to sugarcoat, transform, or distort consent.
As is apparent in most sexual assault cases, consent is not easy to determine retrospectively. Cases often turn into he-said-she-said disputes, and lead to speculation by the media and observers more generally, who attempt to identify prior and subsequent behaviour on the complainants’ parts that might indicate whether or not acts were consensual. The ordeal of taking legal action often discourages survivors from coming forward and pressing charges, even though one wouldn’t think twice about taking legal action for most other physical injuries and emotional traumas.
Certainly, in the recent case against Ghomeshi, subsequent behaviour—including the fact that the women had sent him flowers or suggestive emails after the alleged assaults took place—was used to question the credibility of the women’s claims, especially when these details seemed incongruous with their stories. Many people seem to forget that consent is necessary at every single stage of an encounter or relationship, and just because a survivor continues contact with his or her assailant afterwards for whatever reason, it does not necessarily mean that sexual assault did not occur. Every time such a case falls into the spotlight, the necessity of being proactive rather than reactive is reinforced.
Initiatives such as Rez Project and Consent McGill aim to further conversations and understandings of consent on campus, but the issue cannot be resolved until the message reaches all members of the community. That survivors often wonder whether they are equally responsible for not having explicitly said “No” is extraordinarily disheartening. Project Consent’s videos can complement initiatives at McGill and hopefully reach a broader audience through their quirky but simple take on the issue. Project Consent reminds us: If it’s not yes, it’s no.
– Emma Avery
Project Consent is flash without substance
Recently, several videos appeared online as part of Project Consent, a nonprofit campaign that visualizes sexual consent. They are some of the most stultifying videos in existence, and they say a lot about popular culture’s viral influence on sexual manners in 2016. There are several iterations of the cartoon videos: In one, a personified penis dances towards a vagina, and in another a hand approaches a breast. These videos have gone viral. There were a few other versions of the video, but the gist is pretty evident. Penis hits vagina. Vagina says no. It was a far cry from the consent-by-tea, which asked “Would you like a cup of tea?” instead of “Would you like to have sex?” That video had explained, “If someone does not want a cup of tea, don’t force them to drink it.” How quaint.
There’s a lot to say about the video with the hands, butts, and vaginas, as many people probably do. What it boils down to is a lack of subtlety. This is not like the student in health class objecting to the metaphorical uses of the banana. Clarity is fine. But this was like watching a pornography clip in health class, or if the health teacher himself started groping a mannequin because words were too hard. It was beyond the pale—a slap in the face and a bucket of water over the head at once. A lack of subtlety, an unflinching gaze, and a starkly straightforward message: These define sexual education on the Internet, where the medium of the viral video is the message.
Think about what it means to use talking penises and vaginas as incredible visual panacea for the sexually depraved: It isn’t necessary. The tea skit, where tea was a metaphor for sex, was not too advanced for anyone. In health class, the banana was not too yellow to connote the human phallus, nor was the metaphor a perplexing scourge to responsible condom-use. Some people feel awkward about eating bananas in public, and most everyone can understand the tea video.
There is one simple reason that personified sexual organs appeared on the Internet, and it is not because there was any confusion that needed Project Consent to clear it up. It exists for the same reason pop music and viral videos exist—the people behind Project Consent latched onto the magical effect of popular culture to spread messages. In other words, they understood the need to achieve the status as viral for the video to become wide-reaching.
Pop culture is a format, a style, and a conduit for popularity. Even bizarreness is to its advantage, as it stimulates reactions and conversations. But more often pop culture is simple. Taylor Swift gets right to the heart of romance in only three minutes, and we don’t mind hearing her relatable ideas repeatedly. With pop, no one wants a symphony of subtlety or a lengthy development of ideas. They want simplicity, clear images, and flashing lights. Hence why Taylor Swift videos are such a phenomenon. Upload one, and whamo!—you get millions of views. The same applies for the Project Consent videos, which reduce the message of consent to animated genitalia. The result: A pretty useless video finds its way into your newsfeed. Brief shock-value (really, the detail of some of these 3D organs is bizarre) attracts popularity, but for it to work it has to be all format. All dazzle, no spark. It does not change people’s perceptions—it just attracts their attention.
Project Consent claims it is doing something new, breaking down walls of misconceptions: Hogwash. The only walls it is breaking down are our own feeble barriers to insipid Internet videos. The point of popular culture is to say simple things and use images effectively. Project Consent did this, but it went too far in the direction of images, saying absolutely nothing new.
The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in Canada (PIASA), which has occupied 3479 Rue Peel since 1969, housing a collection of nearly 50,000 books and documents, was informed by McGill that it must move out of its building by June 1. PIASA received this verbal request from the administration on Jan. 21 of this year.
The McGill Polish Students’ Association (MPSA) gathered a petition of nearly 600 signatures from members of the McGill community last week, calling upon the administration to reconsider the decision.
Provost and Vice-Principal (Academic) Christopher Manfredi, cited the building’s physical condition as the reason for its closure.
“The condition of the building in which [PIASA] and the Library are now housed has deteriorated to the point that it can no longer be used for that purpose,” Manfredi wrote in an email to the Tribune. “My understanding is that the supporters of the Institute and Library fully appreciate this fact.”
PIASA was conceived during the Second World War by McGill professor and historian Oskar Halecki and Wanda Stachiewicz, an eminent member of the Polish community in Quebec. Its founding members were allocated space in the James Administration building by a motion passed through McGill’s Board of Governors (BoG), and in 1969, PIASA moved to their current location.
“The institute was founded […] during the war by the Polish scientists and professors who were, at this time, in Canada,” said Stanisław Latek, president of the board of PIASA. “Many of the founders were the members of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kraków, and one of the founding members was Dr. Penfield. He agreed […] to give the space to the Institute, so our collaboration with McGill dates from the very beginning.”
Since then, PIASA has hosted numerous notable Polish figures, including Czesław Miłosz, leader of the Polish Solidarity movement, Lech Wałęsa, leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Marek Edelman, and Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła, who would later become Pope John Paul II.. Agnès Domanski, graduate student at McGill and volunteer at PIASA, highlighted that the institute often functions as an educational port of entry for scholarship between Canada and Poland.
“The idea, essentially, behind the Institute […] is to bring Polish culture to people here, […] to the McGill community, and Montreal at large, Quebec at large,” said Domanski.
Alexandre Magdzinski, MSc(A) in Nursing at McGill, and member of the MPSA, explained that a goal of the petition is to ensure that the administration is aware of the value that PIASA brings to the university.
“We have hundreds of people signing, saying that’s horrible that they’re closing it down.” Magdzinski said. “[McGill] should keep stuff like this, it’s what makes a university a university, these types of contributions.”
A major concern for PIASA is the fate of the Wanda Stachiewicz Polish library, which houses a collection that includes documents from the Polish government in exile, Polish literature and novels translated into French and English, and books smuggled out of Poland during the period of communism. Around 10,000 of these works are currently catalogued in McGill’s system.
“[The collection would be] a gift to our McGill library,” said Colleen Cook, Trenholme Dean of Libraries. “Those materials that we feel are important for a research collection we would bring in […] and materials we felt were inappropriate for a research collection, we would not accept.”
Storage of the remaining collection will be up to PIASA.
“I don’t know what would happen to the remaining volumes, because we wouldn’t own them,” Cook said. “It would be up to the Polish Institute to decide the disposition of them.”
Currently, PIASA does not have a plan for relocation of the Institute or the Library.
“The answer we got […] is basically nothing,” said Domanski. “[The administration is] basically saying ‘Your organization is dying and we will take your books if you want, we’ll put a sticker in them that says Polish Library’ [….] That’s not really a solution [….] That still means effectively the end of the Institute. We don’t have anywhere to go.”
PIASA is not a division of the university, nor does it have a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) which would legally bind the institute with McGill along certain conditions. Additionally, it receives no financial support from McGill. Domanski explained the relationship they have with the university as one of a friendly, informal agreement.
“I guess McGill doesn’t owe us anything,” Domanski said. “All we have is […] a verbal agreement, and […] the precedent of 70 years.”
The library is accessible to McGill students for free, and open to the city of Montreal through its status as a municipal library—which secures its funding through the Quebec Ministry of Culture. PIASA covers the rest of its expenses, such as the conferences it hosts, through personal donations, funding from the Polish Embassy in Ottawa, and the Ministry of Culture in Poland.
“We only have one payroll employee,” said Latek. “[Everyone else] is a volunteer, including me.”
Arts Senator Erin Sobat reached out to PIASA after he saw the Facebook event for the petition. He spoke with volunteers at the institute, and consulted with the third-floor occupant of the same building, the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM), which will also have to vacate.
"[PIASA] doesn’t have a legal relationship with the university at all,” Sobat said. “It’s unfortunate that there’s not even a MoA […] [McGill] is required to give AGSEM a space according to their collective agreement, at minimum an office and a phone."
Sobat indicated he has no specific plans yet for an official response on the decision, although there are options to do so.
“In terms of follow up, we might submit a question to the McGill Senate,” Sobat said. “[MPSA] got over 500 signatures from faculty and students and I’m sure they could get more with outreach.”
The petition will be submitted to McGill on April 15. Magdzinski recommends any student who wishes to vocalize an opinion to the administration to do so through contacting PIASA, or by reaching out to the MPSA.
“For now, we’re going to start with a petition,” Magdzinski said. “If people want to write actual letters, send them out to the Polish Institute […] If you have a personal statement you want to share, or you want to help us out, you can email us too.”
Before attending McGill University, the enormity of the McLennan-Redpath Library Complex struck me. My first steps into the library were both timid and excited. Whether you are going to the library to work on a group assignment, cram for an exam, or to pick up a book, the atmosphere of knowledge is palpable. Sure, the current picture of the library is far from ideal—in particular, McLennan-Redpath is striking in its brutalist concrete squareness—but, it remains the knowledge centre of the university.
Across Canada, university campuses are modernizing. Laptops replace notebooks, lectures are recorded and posted online, and courses are taught remotely through Skype and Google Hangout. Students no longer need to use libraries to have access to thousands of articles and documents. In this context, the plans for upgrading the library seem par to the course. The needs of students have changed since 1969 (the year that McLennan was built), and are even more different from the needs of 1893 (the year that the first Redpath library was built).
Following the recent terror attacks in Lahore and Brussels, terrorist threats seem stronger than ever. According to the most recent Global Terrorism Index, terror-related deaths have surged from 3,329 in 2000 to 32,685 in 2014. The increasing presence of terrorism has resulted in a greater desire to learn why terrorists do what they do.
“There’s more urgency to understand [terrorists] and to identify them ahead of time,” explained Professor Frances Aboud, from McGill’s Department of Psychology.
For most people, it’s easier to believe that there is something mentally wrong with terrorists. They are dismissed as deranged, psychopathic, and sadistic. Using these labels helps create a safer distance between “them” and “us.” Unfortunately, modern social psychology has disproved these labels.
A few well-known studies have gone on to show that ordinary, stable people are capable of inflicting mortal pain onto strangers. Take for instance, the results from Dr. Stanley Milgram’s experiment, which showed that study participants were willing to consistently obey an authority figure—even when obedience called for administering lethal electric shocks delivered to others. Milgram’s ‘obedience to authority’ study is often used to illustrate that anyone can be influenced to commit violent acts against strangers. While many would like to believe that terrorists are monstrous creatures, Milgram’s experiment (and others) demonstrates that the average person can be induced into perpetrating extreme violence.
While there are different variations of terrorism around the world, it is notable that many terrorists are drawn in during adolescence and many become absolutely dedicated to a cause.
Adolescence can be a psychologically difficult time, as identity and a sense of belonging are more valued as an adolescent develops. For example, in adolescence, it is common to associate with a particular band or TV show (think: Harry Potter Potterheads), which can become a part of an individual’s sense of identity. Religion also can, and often does, play a role in developing identity, as there are fundamental principles that one can follow to shape their sense of self. Aboud notes that while there’s nothing wrong with fighting or identifying oneself with a cause, trouble develops when the cause becomes violent.
“It’s easy to tip from the fundamentalism to thinking that you’re absolutely right and the others are absolutely wrong,” Aboud said. “This is a really childish way of thinking about things.”
One of Aboud’s main research focuses is child development and racial prejudices. She notes that at a young age, children are prejudiced towards people that look different from them; however, by the age of 8, children have generally outgrown their black-and-white world and begin to process more advanced themes like fairness and truth. Aboud explains that this childish way of thinking can be brought back, even in adulthood.
“There’s a lot of people who pick it up later in life,” Aboud said. “Even though they can think properly, they go back to thinking in a very dichotomous, black-and-white childish way and that’s just because it suits them ideologically for whatever reason.”
Creating a strong sense of otherness yields a lack of compassion, which can evolve into acts of hate and terror under the right circumstances. It’s important to note that this childish way of thinking is not only present in terrorist groups.
“Although we often think of Islamic extremists and Islamaphobes as being diametrically opposed, the two are inextricably intertwined,” psychologists S. Alexander Haslam and Stephen Reicher explained to Scientific American.
Many terrorist groups and politicians feed off each other to draw support for themselves. The noxious relationship, scholars have recently termed ‘co-radicalization,’ fuels frightening consequences, and new leads, for understanding how extremists are made.
The McGill Network Infrastructure Group plans to upgrade the campus wireless internet services at the beginning of next year. According to Spiro Mitsialis, manager of the Network Infrastructure, the last major upgrade was completed in 2006, but smaller upgrades to service are consistently made to ensure that it can provide for the volume of users on campus.
Mitsialis stated that the McGill campus sees a high number of users daily., the majority of whom connect to the internet with multiple devices.
“We have 30,000 concurrent users,” Mitsialis said. “[But] that doesn’t mean that’s all [individual] users […] because a lot of times a user has multiple devices. I think the industry average is about two and a half devices per user.”
According to Elliott Stekewich, Manager of Finance & IT Contracts at Information Technology Services (ITS), approximately $420,000 per year is spent on wireless and wired internet for the McGill network with an additional $50,000 per year spent on Wi-Fi for the MacDonald campus shuttle bus.
“Wireless access points—equivalent to a home wireless router—costs approximately $1,800 per access point ,” Stekewich said. “Each access point provides a coverage of eight metres radius and has an expected functional life span ranging from seven to 10 years. There are roughly 4,000 antennas presently at McGill.”
The McGill network is currently made up of older 2.4 Gigahertz frequencies and newer five Gigahertz frequencies. The five Gigahertz frequency provides faster and more stable connection.
“People should try to use the 5 Gigahertz as much as possible,” Mitsialis said. “We still have some holes in areas and sometimes we’ll get some complaints […] and when we find that there’s a hole, we fill it.”
Sam Hull, U1 Management, voiced concern that internet services can be slow in classrooms on campus.
“[The Wi-Fi is] generally pretty fast but in a lot of places it can be inconsistent,” Hull said. “That’s fine in certain areas but in classrooms it can be more of a problem—hopefully one the administration can deal with.”
Mitsialis stated that improving internet in classrooms will be a priority when the system is upgraded next year.
“The newer [access points] are going mainly into classrooms, or anywhere we call high density, and most are those locations where students are, so we prioritize […] students,” Mitsialis said. “I think I saw some stats a couple of years ago that said that 90 per cent of the users were students. ”
Norman Chu, Network Analyst at Network Infrastructure, stated that although the internet services for a university such as McGill are complex, the ITS is open to making improvements to the service whenever a complaint is received.
“There’s a lot more complexity that goes into running dozens of access points in an area versus a single one that most people have at home,” Chu explained. “That said […] I’d like to stress that if users do have an issue with their wireless connection, contact the ITS service desk to open a ticket and we’ll be glad to investigate on a case-by-case basis.”
I have never been an athlete. As a child, I was too distracted to play competitively on sports teams, and was often relegated to the sidelines of my kiddie soccer games where I happily zoned out and picked flowers. I have terrible hand-eye coordination, and in middle and high school I only passively engaged in the sports we were required to play in gym class. The summer before entering university, however, fearing gaining the imminent ‘freshman fifteen,’ I decided to try getting in the habit of running. I downloaded a Couch to 5K app on my iPhone, and began doing pre-recorded interval runs that alternated between short intervals of walking and running. Over time, the length of the walking intervals decreased while the running intervals increased, until I was able to run several miles without stopping.
After entering university, finding time to run grew increasingly difficult. Fast forward a year and a half to the end of last semester, and I had fallen off the running wagon. Several peaks of anxiety toward the end of Fall semester led me to the conclusion that I needed to prioritize my mental health, and one way to do so was to take up running again. In an effort to prove to myself that I could, I made my goal to run the Banque Scotia half marathon this April.
Using a training plan I found online, I started running at home in Maryland over winter break, and was able to continue running outside once I returned to school, thanks to this year’s eerily warm weather.
My training plan consists of three shorter runs—between three and five miles each—and one long run per week. Each week, the one long run increases by one mile, so I am regularly scheduled to beat my own distance record and constantly expand my running comfort zone. My best run thus far in my training was a six-mile run—the first time I’d beaten my own record in months. I distinctly remember stalling before leaving the house on a biting January evening, complaining to my roommate about how difficult the run would be. As I began, however, I found it easier than I’d anticipated, and once I reached the five mile mark I felt a rush of endorphins at having run farther than I’d ever been able to. I pushed on to mile six, shocked at how amazing it felt to test my body’s limits and succeed in that moment.
At that time, six miles was a long run. Today, as I prepare for this week’s 11 mile run, my definition of ‘long’ has changed. As I’ve progressed, running has not necessarily become easier, but I am learning how to cope with common struggles I encounter during a run. I find that getting out the door is often the hardest part, so I frequently listen to motivational music or read Instagram or blog posts from some of my favourite runners to push myself to get going. Because long runs can often feel daunting, I try to think about them in terms of smaller increments; I will approach a six mile run as running one mile six times in a row, for example. The app Runkeeper is especially helpful for this; it is a time and mile-tracking tool with a built-in GPS and an audio voice that chimes your distance and time every five minutes. Additionally, the classic running preparation methods—carb-loading, stretching, and doing warm-up and cool-down walks—have been extremely helpful to increasing my endurance during runs.
Having given up on the idea of being athletically-inclined from an early age, the idea of running a half-marathon does not yet feel real. It is my lack of experience that keeps me going. I run to prove to myself that I can, because for most of my life I thought otherwise. If there’s anything I’ve learned from my training, it is that it is never too late to become a runner. If the girl who was often put on the sidelines of soccer games can run a half marathon as a grown-up, anyone can.
In 1984, the world was introduced to a director who would leave a monumental impact on the American film industry. John Hughes made his writer-directorial debut with the underdog comedy Sixteen Candles. Having already written films such as Mr. Mom and National Lampoon’s Vacation, Hughes took his filmmaking one step further by directing the story of a high school student whose entire family has forgotten her 16th birthday.
In Sixteen Candles, Samantha Baker (Molly Ringwald) opens up to a nerdy admirer, aptly named the Geek (Anthony Michael Hall), about how anti-climactic her birthday has been. “It’s physcially impossible for me to get happy,” Sam says mournfully. The conversation is so simple yet conveys brilliantly what many teens feel.
The Breakfast Club, arguably Hughes’ most well known film, occurs predominantly within a single room with only five characters and the stories they share. His script, memorized by the masses, has found its niche within the crevices of angsty teen tumblrs. Although the fashion and pop culture references are outdated, the emotions and struggles have not. In the final scene, the cast says, “each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.” The scene of the five teenagers sitting together on the library floor has just as much significance and emotion now as it did in 1985.
Many actors, including Ringwald and Hall, worked with Hughes multiple times and helped to brand the unique image of his career. Dubbed the Brat Pack, these actors took on a ‘girl- or boy-next-door’ persona that allowed viewers to connect with their characters.
Fast-forward to today, films directed towards teens are the antithesis to Hughes’ pragmatic plotlines. In 2012, Lionsgate Films released the anticipated film based on the book series by Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games. The dystopian-future film enthralled audiences with its morbid content and surreal effects. For almost five years, the film franchise has found success amongst a young adult demographic and earned approximately $1.5 billion in the box office worldwide. Similar franchises, such as Divergent and Twilight, have also found great success in this genre with a heroine caught in a tense love triangle. These modern day teen films bypass the need for a relatable plot or character with grandiose stories and big action. Even films that are relatively true to life find themselves exaggerated in their plots and logistics, such as the recent films The Duff and The Fault in Our Stars.
A sense of defeatism surrounds the millennial generation. As adolescents embark into adulthood, many feel the weight of teenage struggles that are unique to the current world. The over abundances of blockbuster films today fail to present the poignancy of realism. Rather than recognizing the success of past directors, modern day filmmakers are driving themselves further from the truthfulness that cinema is craving. By taking a step back from the fantastical and science fiction, perhaps filmmakers can create cinema for the current generation that is as applicable as Hughes’. His films serve to remind those who are struggling that these problems such as adversity or ennui have been faced before. By allowing the complexity of true adolsecent emotion to speak for itself, Hughes created relatable and lovable characters that we all need. The feelings don’t just fade away, which is why his films possess a sense of timelessness. His ability to capture what is often overlooked by today’s film viewers is his realistic portrayals. Special effects, shock-value comedy, or outlandish plots were almost obsolete to Hughes; he allowed his movies to focus on the words that are just as powerful today as the were 30 years ago.
On March 21, Concordia University issued a statement warning students and faculty that keylogger devices had been found on university computers.
“These keylogger devices can capture personal data such as login information and passwords (for example, passwords associated with your Concordia netname) by tracking the keystrokes used at a workstation,” a press release from Concordia explained.
Students were advised to change their passwords for their Concordia accounts as well as the passwords for any other accounts accessed through the affected units. On March 22, McGill sent an email to students following Concordia’s statement to confirm that no McGill infrastructure had been similarly tampered with.
“The majority of public computers managed by IT Services have already been inspected to verify that no keyloggers are attached, and the inspection will be completed by tomorrow,” the email read. “While we do regularly review and inspect the computers and IT infrastructure managed by McGill, we strongly encourage all McGillians to be vigilant when using any public computer, be it on, or off campus.”
Keyloggers work by recording keystrokes—the keys that a user presses—on a computer. They can take the form of a physical device that intercepts communication between the keyboard and computer, or a software that works at a low level to record keyboard input to send to a third party.
Although McGill students were largely unaffected by the incident at Concordia, security lapses have happened at McGill in the past. One notable example is the Heartbleed Bug. Many websites use a security protocol called SSL to get information from users privately. One implementation of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)—used to establish an encrypted link between a web server and a browser—had a major bug accidentally introduced in 2011. This bug allowed people access information from servers that they should have been blocked, letting eavesdroppers acquire passwords, private keys, and other personal information. In 2014, McGill issued a statement advising students to change their account passwords to reduce the risk of their account being compromised.
It’s easy to forget about the role that security plays in people’s day-to-day lives, but its importance cannot be over-emphasized, especially for university students. Most computer users have terrible habits when it comes to keeping their information secure.
In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed. First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next, my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages.
For a case of what happens when bad habits are exploited, look no further than Mat Honan, a staff writer for Wired. Honan, like many people, used the same email prefix for several accounts, and hadn’t taken the time to set up two-factor authentication on any of his devices. Because of this, after gaining access to his Amazon account, hackers were able to take over his Apple, Gmail, and Twitter accounts within minutes, wiping his iPhone and Macbook and issuing racist tweets from his Twitter account.
“In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed,” Honan wrote in a Wired article. “First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages.”
To protect themselves, students are encouraged to adhere to some simple practices. For starters, students should avoid repeating username and password combinations across accounts and set up two-factor authentication. It’s best to avoid communicating private information over public networks, to help minimize the risk that one security lapse could affect multiple accounts on different services.
In general, although it’s impossible to guarantee that an account will never be compromised, following a few common-sense rules can drastically improve security and mitigate that risk.
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