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a, Basketball, Men's Varsity, Sports

Basketball: Redmen rule, Dufort leaves Love Competition Hall on top

by Zikomo Smith on

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On Saturday, the sold-out Love Competition Hall screamed “MVP” for senior guard Vincent Dufort, Redmen basketball Head Coach David DeAveiro received an ice-bucket shower, and the Redmen squad converged together, hugging and hollering, in the middle of the court after the final whistle.

McGill had just claimed its third RSEQ title in four years, and earned a spot at the CIS National Championships. Dufort starred with 21 points and 8 rebounds, as McGill overcame a persistent UQÁM side 78-67.

The joy after the buzzer reflected the hard work of one of Canada’s most highly-touted teams.

“It feels amazing,” Dufort, who played his final game at Love Competition Hall with the Redmen, said. “It’s just an amazing bunch of guys and it’s so awesome to be able to win it for them and for Coach [DeAveiro] who does so much for our team, and it is awesome to leave on a good note for him.”

McGill started slowly, conceding an 18-13 deficit in the first quarter; UQÁM’s excellent outside, midrange, and free throw shooting proved a threat for the entire game.

“I think that we have a group that when we play well, when we share the ball and we make the extra pass […] we are as good an offensive team as anyone,” Head Coach Nate Philippe of the UQÁM Citadins explained. “We definitely made a lot of progress throughout the year and I am very proud of our group.”

McGill performed effectively against UQÁM guards Kewyn Blain, Greishe Clerjuste, and Rubens Poteau. The trio hit some key shots throughout the game and made 11 of their 12 free throws; however, McGill ultimately held them to a combined 15 of 43 shooting. Clerjust, who had 24 points in the semifinals against Concordia, only made 4 of 14 shots.

“We were trying to keep him to his weak hand–his right hand–most of the time and be in his face because he is a very good catch and shoot [player].” DeAveiro explained. “We wanted to put more pressure on him and close the areas down.”

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After the first quarter, McGill stormed ahead, playing aggressive basketball and hitting key shots. Dufort led the way with strong drives to the basket, and excellent rebounding against UQÁM’s tall front line. Junior guard Dele Ogundokun and junior point forward Jenning Leung shot with authority from the three–point line to hit a combined six treys. Junior guard Michael Peterkin played with energy off the bench, hauling in nine rebounds. UQÁM held its own until the final quarter, where the visitors were worn down by McGill’s all-round, tenacious effort.

“[Confident], I think that’s what we have been all year,” DeAveiro said. “Our biggest strength has been our fourth quarter. I think we have won almost every fourth quarter we have played this year. For us, it is about imposing our will on our opponents, and sticking to our plan.”

McGill displayed their versatility over the Final 4 weekend: The Redmen overcame a stretch of poor shooting in the semifinals to race away from Laval in the second half. A number of players stepped up their games on the offensive end when the Redmen were most in need, in particular Dufort, Leung, and sophomore centre Noah Daoust. On defence, McGill was disciplined and overwhelming, with Peterkin and sophomore forward François Bourque effective on the offensive glass, as well as Ogundokun running past screens to defend on the perimeter.

McGill enters nationals as one of the most feared defensive teams in the country. The 2015-2016 season has been a vindication of one of the best McGill squads in recent history; they started strongly, overcame a post-Christmas shooting slump to win seven of their last eight RSEQ games, and now have a pennant to cap it off.  McGill hopes to display its savvy and talent in the CIS Championships.

“It’s going to take an entire team effort,” Dufort said. “I think we have the talent to do it. If everyone comes together, we play hard on defence and we trust each other, I think we can come home with [the CIS Championship].”

Click here to read our coverage of the Martlet RSEQ Championship game.

a, Letters to the Editor, Opinion

Letter to the editor: Indigenous students at McGill: Alive and well

by Leslie Anne St. Amour on

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Watching the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Winter General Assembly (GA) livestream as an Indigenous student was painful. Indigenous peoples' needs were brought out to support motions that had no active endorsement by Indigenous students. Our fights and struggles were discussed as a way to make issues relevant or motions were brought out by non-Indigenous people seeking to support Indigenous peoples without having spoken to Indigenous students that are represented by SSMU. I'm not here to say whether the Motion Regarding Support for the BDS Movement or the Motion Regarding the Kahtihon’tia:kwenio were wrong, but that it was painful watching the disregard for Indigenous students at McGill by groups claiming to be anti-oppressive.

In the time leading up to the GA, I had seen the Motion Regarding an Increase in Indigenous Content at McGill used as a method to make the Motion Regarding Support for the BDS Movement relevant to students. I received an email sent to the entirety of one of my Indigenous Studies classes using the motion as a segue into paragraphs describing the need for the Motion Regarding Support for the BDS Movement to pass, with only a link given to the motion relevant to the course. I felt used. An issue that affects me on a daily basis was used as a method to raise awareness for a separate, highly controversial motion. On another occasion, a student came to make an announcement in a political science class focusing on Aboriginal politics. After thoroughly describing the Motion Regarding Support for the BDS Movement, the student took about 30 seconds to mention the Motion Regarding an Increase in Indigenous Content at McGill and made a comment to the effect of “I hope you will see the similarities and therefore vote ‘Yes’ for BDS.”

The Motion Regarding the Kahtihon’tia:kwenio was presented without regard to the differing opinions of Indigenous students or thoughts as to how such a motion could impact them. McGill has students from the same community as the women title holders, and they were neither consulted nor made aware of the motion. The movers of the motion were warned of controversy and chose to not consult. A motion such as this can have impacts on how Indigenous students are perceived on campus and for some in their home communities.

These choices impact Indigenous students. We struggle for visibility on a campus with only 230 undergraduate students identifying as Indigenous (for reference, 23,140 undergraduate students enrolled in Fall 2015). To have our needs spoken for by others or used as justification for other motions adds to this invisibility. We are here and we can speak for ourselves. Allyship is standing behind, not in front, of those you are in solidarity with. When others speak on our behalf or speak of us without inviting us into the discussion, it perpetuates the idea that we are not here. But we are.

a, Basketball, Men's Varsity, Sports

Basketball: Daoust dominates, McGill Redmen move to RSEQ finals

by Zikomo Smith on

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A record-setting 1,204-person crowd saw sophomore centre Noah Daoust spearhead McGill’s 76-69 victory over Laval in the semi-finals of the RSEQ Final Four. Redmen Head Coach DeAveiro strongly emphasized the raucous atmosphere and the talent on display.

“This is the way it should be on campus I think.” DeAveiro said. “The energy in this building is unbelievable—your work has to be done on practice, because when they are on the floor they cannot hear you [due to the noise]. You have great teams in this province, great players in this league. Unfortunately you have to wait for the playoffs to have crowds like this.”

The best and the worst of the Redmen were on display in the first half; they struggled to make shots and protect the paint.

“We had a great start, and then had a bump in the road, where [we did not shoot well],” DeAveiro said. ‘[…] Early we had breakdowns [….]we forgot to switch. We wanted to protect the paint a little bit more, but they got open layups.”

Indeed, McGill only shot 28 per cent from the field in the first half, although tenacious offensive rebounding from junior guard Dele Ogundokun, junior forward Francois Bourque and junior guard Michael Peterkin helped to hold Laval to a 29-27 lead. Rouge et Or guard Alexandre Leclerc was particularly difficult to guard when he was dribbling past screens. He finished with 19 points and went 5-13 from the three-point line.

Laval started to pull away in the third quarter. Then, Daoust stepped up. He devastated the Laval defence by screening and keeping the opposition off-balance with clever cuts and rolls into space.

“ I tried [rolling to the basket] in the first half,” Daoust explained. “But they changed up the ball screen defence, so I would keep popping out […] to catch them off guard, and it kept leaving me open.”

Daoust shot 5-6 from the three point line and finished with 19 points. He also acted as a spy in the paint for the McGill defence, which was far more effective at cutting off baseline drives to the basket in the third and fourth quarters.

“I feel confident coming from the weak side and helping,” Daoust explained. “The guy I was guarding was not really a shooter so I could spy in the key a lot.”

In the fourth quarter, McGill blew past Laval—their passing was calm and precise, and helped initiate many transition points. The shooting was lights out. MCGill will be buoyed going into the RSEQ final against UQAM for the RSEQ on Saturday at 7 p.m., where they will also be playing for a berth in the CIS National Championship

Stat of the Game

McGill shot 53 per cent from the field in the second half, in comparison with 28 per cent in the first half.

Quotable

“He gave us a lift when we needed it […] we needed one guy to get going and the rest of our guys could feed off his confidence and get going.”-  DeAveiro on Daoust’s inspiring performance

Play of the game

Midday through the fourth quarter, Daoust, acting as a spy in the paint, came from the weak side to athletically swat away a Laval player’s attempt on the basket.

a, Opinion

Settling the score between the Milton and Roddick gates

by Jackie Houston on

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Among the various forums for discussion in the McGill community, there is no arena more heated than the McGill Reddit feed. In this warzone of unfiltered debate, the best and brightest minds of the anonymous internet community go head-to-head to tackle the campus’ most pressing issues. With the bake sale versus samosa case now at a stalemate, the Reddit panel has honed its crosshairs on its next pressing question—which is better: The Milton or Roddick gates?

Complex and deeply divisive, this debate could very well be referred to as McGill’s Watergate. As the stately face of every promotional photo of campus, the Roddick gates reflect our school’s official image and frame the Arts Building. But if they are the face of McGill, then the Milton gates—undervalued yet reliable, underrated yet essential—must be its heart.

Aesthetically, the Roddick gates are striking. Apart from being the stuff of Facebook cover photo fantasy, the view of the Y-intersection and the Arts Building that Roddick offers is nothing less than iconic. The view as one exits campus, however, is a different story. Welcome to the grey, urban wasteland that is Rue Sherbrooke—the border between sheltered academia and the real world, the original “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”

By contrast, the Milton gates’ scenery is twofold. Arriving to campus, one is greeted with the intersection of the steps leading to the top of the Y—ideal for tanning in the summer and uphill traction in the winter—and McConnell Engineering, McGill’s Sexiest Building Alive. And after a long day of studying or crying quietly in the library, Milton gates is the portal to the quaint, residential comforts of the McGill ghetto. Whether home means the cramped walk-up you share with five other people or the comfort of a Lola Rosa burrito, the Milton gates will take you there.

The Milton gates are more than just a campus entry point, though—they’re a source of community. What is solidarity, if not standing shoulder-to-shoulder with fifteen other strangers waiting to cross Rue University; what is a hero, if not the brave soul who finally risks it all and leads the collective j-walk? This campus watering hole isn’t restricted to just pedestrians—the Milton bike racks serve as a daily meeting point for the unofficial union of McGill cyclists. And as any Management student can confirm, the Milton gates boast a thriving economy. Its chief exports include secondhand clothing exchange, reused textbooks, and tickets to that Management Undergraduate Society (MUS) concert that everyone is apparently going to.

A solitary realm, the Roddick gates’ chief export is loneliness.

More than nice views or a robust civil society, however, what truly defines the Milton gates is their authenticity. The Roddick gates are where we all stood on our first McGill campus tour, clutching a welcome package and a dream while a stranger tried to explain what a martlet is. They are the gates of prospective students, visiting family members, and Uber drivers. The Milton gates are the proverbial backdoor to McGill. You didn’t know what or where they were until you actually got here—now you can’t imagine miserably half-jogging to your 8:30 a.m. lecture anywhere else. The Roddick gates may be the formal entrance to campus, but the Milton gates are the entrance of the people.

Bernie Sanders, Killer Mike, and Lil B
a, Letters to the Editor, Opinion

Letter to the editor: Bernie Sanders’ campaign especially culpable in social media misinformation

by Koji Shiromoto on

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In February, Jenna Stanwood argued in her piece, “Social media normalizes misinformation in US presidential primaries,” that users of social media have become swept away with catchy slogans and misleading information, to the detriment of good decision-making, and that this trend is a worrying sign for democracy. All of these points I absolutely agree with—but the piece seems to establish a sort of equivalence in culpability between the Clinton and Sanders campaigns that I don’t think is necessary true. Throughout the Democratic primary, one candidate consistently relies on absurdly simplistic soundbites more than the other. That candidate is Bernie Sanders.

For example, take his plans to spend approximately $20 trillion over the next 10 years. There would be “Medicare for All,” tuition-free college at public institutions, and infrastructure to “Rebuild America.” Everyone would reap all the benefits but bear few of the costs, as Sanders would finally make the wealthy “pay their fair share.” All excellent ideas that would help create the world that progressives (and probably others) want to see. But, according to the Sanders campaign’s logic, if we haven’t done this before—even in times Democrats held majorities in Congress or state legislatures—clearly there must have been rampant corruption and ties to Wall Street.

Well, perhaps. Corruption might be part of the reason for why these policies do not exist, but another aspect is that the policies themselves would be difficult to implement, even with bipartisan support. In Denmark, a country that Sanders has on numerous occasions held up as a model, everyone pays at least a 25 per cent sales tax (VAT, to be precise) on everything. Vermont, Sanders’ home state, tried to adopt a health care system along the lines of “Medicare-for-All” but scrapped it because the necessary taxes were higher than anticipated. That Sanders promises a panacea that nowhere else has managed to achieve should feel instinctively off—and indeed, a study has already come out showing that Sanders’ healthcare plan (which accounts for a majority of costs) would blow a $1 trillion hole into the budget annually. For context, the annual budget is around $4 trillion a year.

His own team seems to have a somewhat cavalier attitude about numerical accuracy, considering it forecasted greater savings on prescription medications than we actually spend on them (which is impossible) and $160 billion annually in savings just from plastic surgery. It’s since revised the first figure to an actually possible number, though how they’d gotten it so wrong they never explained; instead, to skeptics of his math, his campaign director responded with another soundbite: “They’ve picked sides with Hillary Clinton.” Regardless of whether you think these radically more progressive values are worth fighting for—I think they are—the slogan-heavy, detail-light manner in which he’s promising to fight for them should be concerning.

A similar narrative of “feel-good” proposals that are arithmetically unworkable emerges from his promises on criminal justice. Sanders repeatedly promises that “at the end of [his] first term, we will not have more people in jail than any other country.” This would be impossible, for the simple reason that there are more prisoners in state prisons and county jails, which no President has any control over, than there are prisoners in China (the country with the second-most prisoners). He has framed his proposal for a national $15 minimum wage as necessary to keep workers out of poverty. While such a policy would benefit cities with higher prevailing wages and costs of living, its possible effects on lower-cost areas are far less certain. In both these areas, Sanders refuses to engage with the details and nuances of policy making, instead contenting himself with simple, emotive narratives that seem hard to oppose.

With substantial momentum in the primaries in, Sanders should clearly be treated not as a protest movement. Instead, he should be viewed as a candidate with serious aspirations of defeating Hillary Clinton and winning the general election; however, the myriad gaping arithmetic holes in his policies mean that they’d have to be watered down, or, like Vermont’s healthcare, abandoned altogether. The end result would be an electorate disillusioned by the progressive project.

Stanwood is absolutely right that we can’t let ourselves be “swayed by catchy information on the internet.” By this measure, Sanders, whose campaign revolves around catchy information, requires the most scrutiny.

a, Opinion

Truth and reconciliation beyond negotiations

by Albert Park on

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Throughout the many changes and evolutions in Canada’s history, there is one issue that has always plagued the nation: The inability to meet the needs and demands of Aboriginal peoples; however, recently, after many years of negotiations and struggles, three Innu nations are on the verge of reaching a historic land settlement agreement with the federal and Quebec government.

In retrospect, this welcome news has come with impeccable timing. Last summer, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released a report on Canadian Aboriginal residential schools, which prompted Canadians to rethink their country’s treatment of Aboriginal peoples, and recommended several changes that the Canadian government should implement to make amends with the Aboriginal population.

Although none of the proposed suggestions were directly about land claims, it is unmistakable that this recent agreement between the nations and the government is a step towards making amends by recognizing the sovereign rights of the Aboriginal peoples, which was the overarching aim of the TRC recommendations. But in order for further reconciliation to be achieved, non-aboriginal Canadians must make a greater effort to interact and communicate with Aboriginal members of their community in order to build a mutual relationship. This will pave the way for further political actions to correct historical inequality and bridge the gap between governmental policies and the tangible reality of friendship between non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal people in Canadian society.

Reconciliation with Aboriginal peoples has a deeper meaning than compensations and land settlement agreements. It requires the nation to respect the ideas and opinions of Aboriginal  people and realize their vital role in Canadian society. In part, this calls for increased educational content about Aboriginal peoples in Canada in school curriculums, which was among the TRC’s recommendations under “Education for Reconciliation.” However, a government-introduced curriculum is only a small facet of this objective; it is also imperative that there is increased direct communication between non-aboriginal and Aboriginal communities in order to facilitate a personal understanding of the needs and values of Aboriginal peoples of Canada.

The importance of community relations in aiding political agreements can be seen in the land settlement issue. Marc Chaloup, who represents the Essipit Innu, explained that protests from local communities were a large barrier to reaching an agreement on the treaty.

“We’ve had people protest in neighbouring communities — they took to the streets and yelled, ‘No treaties for the Innu,’” Chaloup said. “They carried signs that said, ‘No to the treaty.’ They lobbied the government. It was rough.”

a, Letters to the Editor, Opinion

Letter: Motion Regarding Support for the Kahtihon’tia:kwenio at the SSMU GA

by Ashley Dawn Louise Bach on

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On the motion regarding support of the Kahtihon’tia:kwenio

Indigenous students at McGill University suffer from underrepresentation and, consequently, misrepresentation. Stereotypes, prejudice, and systemic racism are just the beginning of complex Indigenous relations at McGill. With only 230 Indigenous students attending the university, consultation with Indigenous students is simply overlooked. As coordinator of the Indigenous Student Alliance (ISA), I am obliged to change that. The Motion Regarding Support of the Kahtihon’tia:kwenio has forced me to publicly address the lack of Indigenous student consultation and the ramifications of these actions.

The motion is certainly complex. Some resolutions in the motion, for example, requiring the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) to lobby McGill’s administration to listen to Indigenous voices, hint at similar goals that Indigenous groups on campus have been working towards for years. But the motion, which was described as being created with “extensive consultation with Indigenous women,” never asked for the ISA’s input or the input of the Indigenous Education Advisor or the First Peoples’ House. SSMU’s Indigenous Affairs Coordinator had advised the motion movers to consult Indigenous students first. They declined to.

Indigenous peoples are not homogenous; we are politically pluralistic and represent a diversity of perspectives. For example, in Fall 2015, a handful of student groups hosted events with Kahentinetha Horn. Some members of the ISA felt it was necessary to ask these groups to invite additional Indigenous speakers because Kahentinetha Horn is a radical Indigenous speaker who often claims to represent all Indigenous peoples. The student groups simply did not know Kahentinetha Horn’s history and did not think to ask Indigenous students on campus if it was appropriate to invite her.

Kahentinetha Horn is a driving force behind the development of the motion and is the author of the notice of seizure sent to McGill in September. The motion movers referenced the notice as an important reason for their motion; however, Kahentinetha Horn has produced controversial works previously, without the support of the Longhouse of Kahnawake, and her notice of eviction was no exception. In my own experience, the eviction notice raised concern amongst uninformed students who saw the notice as a legal threat from hostile natives. Of course the intention of the notice was to give the air of legal significance, but being issued by just one community member of the Mohawk Nation does not actually give it any weight. Had the motion movers consulted the ISA or First Peoples’ House, Indigenous students would have been able to explain these nuances non-community members might overlook. Consultation with the community would be even better, and ISA could have pointed them in the right direction.

The motion’s resolutions also contained troubling points of action. The Kahtihon’tia:kwenio are not, to my knowledge, students at McGill, and yet the resolution asks SSMU to “support [them]… through methods including, but not limited to: Education, publicity, funds, and material support.” The resolutions include no mention of consultation with Indigenous students, Indigenous services on campus, and, most importantly, the communities the Kahtihon’tia:kwenio are from. The motion movers explained they were told it was “not their place to consult with [the women’s] community,” which may be true, but is also rather suspicious given that Kahentinetha Horn has not received much community support on this issue and Six Nations has been pursuing litigation against the federal government on the loan repayment for quite some time.

In sum, this motion was made without consultation with Indigenous students and relies upon a controversial Indigenous figure’s statements, which are not backed by her community. Its resolutions bring up important points on hearing Indigenous voices but the motion movers excluded most of those voices in the first place. Had Indigenous students and administrators in the university been approached before the motion was made, we would have had a chance to explain the controversy behind the notice of eviction and make the motion more appropriate. After the motion was postponed, I had a chance to talk with the motion movers, and we agreed to discuss and work together on the motion and similar motions in the future. I hope this situation serves as a learning point for the university and will encourage future consultation with Indigenous students on Indigenous issues.

 

a, McGill, News, SSMU

McGill Principal Suzanne Fortier responds to failed BDS motion

by Laura Hanrahan on

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The passage of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) motion at the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) Winter 2016 General Assembly (GA), and its subsequent failure in an online ratification period, has garnered a variety of reactions among the McGill community—including the administration’s condemnation of the university’s participation in the BDS movement. 

The motion, brought forward by petition and initially passed at the GA, proposed a mandate for SSMU to support campaigns associated with the BDS movement through the office of the vice-president (VP) External, and specifically outlined a need to divest from corporations the supporters of the movement considered complicit in the occupation of the Palestinian territories. 

McGill Principal Suzanne Fortier released a statement following the release of the online ratification results, explaining the university’s position on the BDS movement.

“The BDS movement, which among other things, calls for universities to cut ties with Israeli universities, flies in the face of the tolerance and respect we cherish as values fundamental to a university,” Fortier wrote. “It proposes actions that are contrary to the principles of academic freedom, equity, inclusiveness and the exchange of views and ideas in responsible, open discourse.”

Laura Khoury, U2 Engineering, an organizer of McGill BDS Action Network—the group responsible for bringing the motion forward—expressed dismay with Fortier’s letter.

“It was extremely disappointing to see Principal Fortier, through her statement, delegitimize the voices of more than 2,000 students without attempting to understand their concerns,” Khoury wrote in an email to the Tribune.

The motion specifically referenced McGill’s investments in companies operating in Israeli settlements, including Mizrahi-Tefahot Bank and Re/Max real estate. Principal Fortier’s statement did not address those investments, focusing rather on the implications of divesting from Israeli universities.

“It is frustrating that the statement did not address the actual text of the motion,” Khoury wrote. “The lack of acknowledgement of these existing financial ties to international corporations that clearly demonstrate social injury toward Palestinians on a daily basis is an active stance to be complicit in the illegal Israeli occupation.”

According to McGill’s Internal Relations Director Doug Sweet, it is impossible to ignore the fact that boycotts from academic institutions are a central part of the BDS movement as a whole.

“Principal Fortier’s statement was consistent with the university’s position on the BDS movement in its entirety, which includes an academic boycott of Israeli academics and scholars, and their institutions,” Sweet wrote in an email to the Tribune. “[The] McGill administration has been on the record as being steadfastly opposed to this movement [….] You cannot isolate just one component of the movement and seek support for it that way.”

Khoury cited financial pressures as the suspected primary reason for the university’s steadfast opposition to BDS.

“It is important to realize that the reaction by the University has clearly come from outside financial pressure and is not based on principled research,” Khoury wrote.

Sweet alluded to the divisive effect that the motion has had on the McGill community, and on alumni in particular. 

“As you can imagine with an issue as divisive as this, and an alumni base as large and widespread as McGill’s, alumni reaction has been quite diverse, as it has been for our Faculty members, students and staff,” Sweet explained. “Some agree with the stance taken by Principal Fortier; some don’t. As it is the case with every issue, we listen to all members of our community and take their concerns – some of which can be polar opposites–to heart.”

One such alumna, Jodie Katz (BA ’97), vehemently disagreed with the university’s participation in the BDS movement.

“I was appalled and shocked by the SSMU verdict [regarding] BDS two weeks ago, and further revolted by the mail—which I received moments after the vote came through my social media feeds—asking me to please donate to the school which I now believe to be tainted and tarnished,” Katz wrote in an email to the Tribune. “Confused by the actions that transpired at the SSMU vote, I am so saddened that my beloved school is now a thorn in my side.”

According to Katz, the motion has the potential to misrepresent the student population as a whole. 

“Every student at McGill should be fairly represented,” Katz explained. “The BDS movement reeks of propaganda and unrealistic perspectives [….] As a Jew, we must stand with Israel and we must all become more educated about the treatment of Palestinians by all nations and make proper informed perspectives. Calling something an ‘apartheid state’ with little initiative other than calling on a boycott is irresponsible.”

When asked if the failed online ratification would change her perspective on making donations to McGill, Katz did not dissent.

“I will have to reconsider but right now the answer is no,” Katz wrote. “I am encouraged by McGill’s response and Principal Fortier’s email but it’s ‘already out there’ making us look as bad as the schools who do not denounce.”

According to Khoury, despite the motion’s failure, the McGill BDS Action Network will continue its efforts on campus. 

“The McGill BDS Action network will continue to organize around BDS because there is an obvious marginalization of Palestinian students and their allies at McGill,” Khoury wrote. “In moments like these it is important to look at the history of McGill’s institutional positions on social movements. 

Khoury justified the continuation of BDS Action by drawing parallels to both Canada’s and McGill’s reactions to the divestment movement around South Africa in the 1980s.

“Both the Canadian government and McGill were complicit in South African apartheid and initially refused to join the international movement to divest,” Khoury wrote. “There is historical proof that people in positions of power have been in the wrong before and are generally pressured by financial powers rather than moral, principled reasoning. It is only until the social pressure from students, faculty, and alumni outweighs McGill’s financial interests that the university will have to change its stance.”

In response, Sweet stated that the university will maintain its position on the BDS movement.

“The university administration’s position on BDS is clear, and has been since this issue was first raised on campus in 2007,” Sweet wrote. “We will reiterate it as necessary.”

In light of the controversy surrounding the BDS motion, during its Feb. 24 Council meeting, SSMU Council passed a motion to put forward a question during the Winter Referendum which, if passed, would create a GA Steering Committee, composed of the SSMU president, VP (University Affairs), speaker of council, four councillors and a third Executive member to be chosen by a vote of the Council, who will decide if the content of a potential GA motion is too divisive or external to SSMU’s mandate to be debated and voted on by students. The question additionally outlines that the GA Steering Committee’s ruling can be overturned by a two-thirds majority.

“The requirement that positions on external political issues be adopted by a two-thirds vote would ensure that the adoption of external positions comes with the support of a significant portion of the Membership,” the motion reads.

a, Science & Technology

Exploring the world of math

by Clare Lyle on

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The fast-paced world of finance has always been filled with big numbers. Astronomical numbers. Mind-bogglingly huge numbers that inspire the question: How does this much money even exist? Investors turned to mathematicians for help answering this question. Thus, quantitative finance was born. Simply, quantitative finance is a math-intensive subfield that lets investment firms use computational methods to gain insight into markets.

Sebastian Dragnea is a McGill alumnus currently working as a quantitative analyst, known as a ‘quant,’ at Morgan Stanley, an investment banking firm. He graduated from McGill in 2014 with a joint honours degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. The decision to enter quantitative finance was, for him, natural.

“I liked both sides [of the program],” Dragnea explained. “I enjoyed programming and I enjoyed the math [….] So I wanted a job that combined both of those and the best field I found that combined [them] was quantitative finance. What I found at Morgan Stanley was that I was doing a lot of programming, but also doing math, and also applying a third field of finance, which involved different ways of looking at data.”

Despite working at one of the best-known investment banks in the world, Dragnea only took one finance course at McGill.

“That’s pretty common in quantitative finance,” Dragnea explained. “If you come in with a strong background in data analysis or applied math or programming, that’s all the skills you need, and then you can learn finance on the job.”

This is because the required skills and expectations from a quantitative analyst differ wildly from those of more stereotypical Wolf-of-Wall Street-style investment bankers, whose intensive schedules are infamous.

Projected growth from 2014 to 2024 in mathematical sciences careers was 28 per cent

“A typical workday starts somewhere between 7:30 and 8:00 [a.m.],” Dragnea explained. “I’ll check the [financial] news in the morning, make sure all of our software is working and implement any updates. Then, while the markets are open we have shorter term and longer term projects.”

Short-term projects include tasks like doing research for traders on bonds, or looking at particular funds. At the end of the day, after the market closes, a quant might work on longer-term projects to answer questions that can have a major impact on future success. 

“‘How do we automatically price this security?’” Dragnea said. “That can be anything from short term feed analysis to an idea of research-style questions: What’s the data? What can we infer from this? Okay, this is a strategy we should employ. What’s an algorithm that can implement this?’” 

But the biggest challenge of working in finance, Dragnea explained, is that it’s complicated.

“I’d say the biggest surprise was how much of an imperfect world it is in finance,” Dragnea said. “In physics, a lot of the problems you’re solving have very fundamentally true solutions which are correct all the time, whereas in finance you end up with a lot of approximations, and doing your best in an imperfect world.”

On the other end of the spectrum are the researchers who are seeking to push the boundaries of what is theoretically possible. Especially in more applied fields like computer science and combinatorics, the distinction between academia and industry is growing increasingly fuzzy. Currently a PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University, Nicolas Resch graduated from McGill in 2015, and has since been doing research in interactive computation and coding theory.

“I’m studying theoretical computer science, [which is] a mathematical framework for computation,” Resch said. “This lets us design more efficient algorithms [to create better computer programs] and understand the limits of computation, [to understand what computer programs can’t do].”

Our ability to express problems mathematically—and then solve those problems—is what has allowed humanity to travel to outer space, to fly, and to communicate almost instantaneously across the globe.

Experts in sought-after fields like machine learning frequently straddle the line between universities and corporations; a chief example is Andrew Ng, who co-founded Coursera and is both an associate professor at Stanford and chief scientist at Baidu; the equivalent of Google in China. This type of work often involves communication between two individuals on a channel, a process known as ‘interactive communication.’

“The goal is to come up with ways for two people to talk back and forth over a channel even if the channel sometimes distorts what they’re saying,” Resch said.

Even though this is theoretical computer science, people communicate over noisy channels every day. Memory registers are struck by cosmic rays, 1s are mistakenly flipped to 0s in transistors, and hardware is misconfigured on networks.

“[One area I’m working in] is called ‘knowledge-preserving interactive coding,’” said Resch. “The idea is you have two people—called, as always, Alice and Bob—who want to talk back and forth in a noisy environment so some of their messages are being corrupted. The […] requirement is that they don’t reveal anything that they know that they wouldn’t have revealed in non-noisy environment.”

Although this sounds a bit abstract, it’s something that people do in their own interactions every day. Resch compares this to a student taking a test. If a teacher gives the student a problem to solve, the teacher wants to be sure that the student is able to solve the first problem before moving onto the next; however, in a noisy communicative environment, the teacher may be tricked into thinking the student solved the problem when he or she really didn’t. 

Compared to the lucrative salaries available in industry, the incentive to enter academia is usually more personal. Spending five or more years trying to solve a single problem requires both a passion for the subject, and an immense quantity of patience.

Enrollment numbers in the school of computer science at McGill has exploded, increasing from 138 to 465 declared majors in the last 5 years

“I guess I just really like learning math, so I wanted an excuse to learn about all of the topics that I found interesting,” Resch said. “I figured I would spend a lot of time reading about math regardless of what I was doing, so I might as well try to get a degree out it. I also really like research, so it seemed like a PhD program would be ideal for me. And I guess my dream at the moment is to become a professor, so a PhD is really a must.”

Although mathematics has a reputation for being abstract and removed from the real world, its students, like Resch and Dragnea, find in it a beauty and a powerful ability to describe the world, from finding patterns in economic markets to describing how information is transmitted. Numbers and structures are everywhere, and mathematics can give us the power to make sense of them. Perhaps those high school math classes were intended to do more than combat grade inflation—the proof is left as an exercise to the reader.

a, Opinion

Gendered policies must avoid crossing line into paternalism

by Emma Avery on

More in a:

Part of working towards true gender equality, whatever that looks like, is creating policies to help dismantle institutional practices that give men an advantage over women. This can be a controversial and contentious process, but is necessary in eliminating subconscious, institutionalized sexism. The challenge, however, is that in working towards gender equality, society cannot just simply say that women get exactly the same policies as men: Women and men are inherently different biologically, and always will be. This may be stating the obvious, but it means that in some cases, different policies are required for different genders. This is the fine line between equality and paternalism.

Historically, gendered policies often meant paternalism. Women couldn’t vote, own property, or hold certain jobs, to name a few. Today, these lines are being drawn in new policy arenas, such as healthcare. In light of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recent recommendation that all women not on birth control should not consume alcohol, and a UK company’s recent decision to pioneer a “period policy,” it is apparent that certain solutions venture too far into the field of a woman’s personal discretion.

While perhaps well-intentioned, the CDC’s recommendation stirred resentment about paternalistic undertones for implying that women couldn’t make such decisions for themselves. If the recommendations had been framed differently, such as by outlining risks in detail so that women would be able to make informed decisions for themselves, there might not have been such backlash. But when a gendered policy is framed in a way that leaves a woman’s personal discretion out of the picture, it feels much more like paternalism than a friendly PSA.

A period policy would exacerbate the challenges women already face in managing pregnancy and maternity leave with their careers.

A “period policy,” however, opens up a whole new set of problems. Bex Baxter, director of a Bristol-based company called Coexist, along with Alexandra Pope, a women’s leadership coach, is exploring ways to implement a policy to destigmatize menstruation and allow women to take time off or work more flexibly while menstruating. Baxter herself takes a day and a half off every month, and is quoted in the Guardian as saying that “there is a misconception that taking time off makes a business unproductive—actually it is about synchronising work with the natural cycles of the body.” She states she is much more productive in the days following her period. While extreme menstrual pain is a real issue that can be debilitating for some women, some gynecologists argue that the focus should instead be on actually treating this chronic pain.

Like the CDC’s recommendations, Baxter’s ideas are no doubt well-intentioned; however, they have too much potential to feed into notions of female incompetencey. At worst, if introduced in more companies, they might lead to women being denied important tasks or time-consuming promotions, or being resented for receiving ‘special treatment.’ A period policy would exacerbate the challenges women already face in managing pregnancy and maternity leave with their careers.

As women, we want to achieve equal opportunities for success without receiving “special treatment;” however, we shouldn’t have to feel ashamed of warranting different healthcare policies under certain circumstances. The problem is that the very policies that people such as Pope promote also further the divide between genders. In attempting to make society more accepting of biological differences between males and females, these policies feed into unsubstantiated notions that women are weaker than their male counterparts, or too emotional and incompetent for certain jobs. It’s hard to imagine that the US Republicans would feel any more comfortable with the idea of Hillary Clinton in office if she could take a day off every month to attune her duties to the power of her cycle, regardless of the state of affairs worldwide. It’s not hard to think of a number of other jobs that would also find such a policy worrisome.

To mitigate gender inequality in the workplace, employers and legislators could explore ways to balance maternal leave with paternal leave. Giving women time off every month too closely resembles sheltering women from things they were supposedly incapable of. As such, the risk of a ‘period policy’ still being perceived this way is too great. While it may be hard to walk the line between equal opportunity and paternalism, it is important to allow for personal discretion in individual matters. Employers and legislators should instead focus on improving healthcare for women suffering from chronic menstrual pain, or increasing support for birth control and abortions if they are concerned about fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Improved education and funding for women’s health would cater to biological differences without limiting a woman’s opportunities or personal discretion in the workplace or in society.

 

 

Emma Avery is a second year anthropology and urban systems student at McGill. Her favourite television show is (still) The Office. She is passionate about soccer, dogs, and St-Viateur bagels.

 

@McGillTribOp | [email protected]

 

 

 

 
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