Enough on the strikes, the protests, the hate, the peace-walks, the promises and the lies, lets have some fun news! Here’s a little anecdote.
On a recent bear-watching trip to Churchill, Manitoba, I came across a rather disconcerting realisation, fears of which had began on my very first week here in Montreal, a couple months ago.
Students Gather for “We are all McGill” event on November 14 (Storify)
On November 14, hundreds of students gathered for the “We are all McGill” protest on the downtown campus. The event was heartwarmingly peaceful: none of the roads were blocked, James admin remained unoccupied, and high level administrators mingled with the crowd of students and professors. We’ve compiled many of the tweets and photos from the event while the Daily and Trib get their stories up.
Click “Read More” to view the Storify. Read on…
Listen to HMB deny responsibility for riot police on campus on CBC this morning
Heather Munroe Blum was a guest on CBC this morning, where she was asked a series of pretty hard-hitting questions by the Daybreak host. Her response to almost all of them? “I’m not in charge, I wasn’t there, please go away.”
Listen to it for yourself. Asked if she’ll participate in the discussion at 12:30 at Jamess square “I’ll be walking around campus.”
Try to find her!
Can we all just stop talking about Zach Newburgh now?
Because when we talk about Zach and the pretty but questionably useful website that he is trying to make money with, we just drive more traffic to the aforementioned website, increasing his chances of actually making money.
VERY BRIEF REVIEW:
Last year, Zach Newburgh was the elected president of SSMU. He also started working for a website that wanted access to students. In return for the unparalleled access that he had to students, being their elected representative, he entered into an arrangement with that website, and is now clearly working for them. Given the absurd amount of his facebook wall that he devotes to advertising for that website, we can reasonably expect that he is now attempting to make money with it.
So in one sentence: Newburgh used his elected position to give a website extra access to McGill students and publicity on campus, he is now trying to benefit from this arrangement financially.
This week, news broke that he is requesting a listing of all SSMU members (every McGill undergraduate student) and their addresses. The law prohibits him from using the list for commercial purposes, but does allow him to obtain it. Sounds really fucking sketchy to us, but make of it what you will. His actions have created a new wave of stories in the campus press, and made the fucking website that he abused his position in order to promote a thing again. He didn’t need the list – he just had to ruffle enough feathers to get people talking about him again.
Get it? Because when we talk about Zach Newburgh, we talk about his website. And when we talk about his website, people go to it. And when people go to it, Zach makes money.
SO WHAT CAN YOU DO? It’s actually really simple:
- Don’t go to Zach’s website.
- Stop talking about Zach.
- Use any of the other tools that exist out there to find jobs (including the one you already pay for: CaPS).
Also, in the interest of full disclosure, THIS WEBSITE, that you are READING THIS POST ON, has brought in $100 in ad revenue, ever. It has cost about $260 to keep on the internet (although we use that hosting for other purposes).
McGill Admin stifles MUNACA’s freedom to assemble and express themselves *near* campus
This morning, MUNACA (the huge union on strike) announced that McGill went to court to prevent it from picketing anywhere near university property. The court injunction essentially prohibits strike activities within four meters of campus (so, certainly off the sidewalk surrounding all of McGill’s ‘gates’). It’s kind of a surprising turn of events for a university that went to bat so ferociously for ‘freedom of expression on campus’ two years ago, when a huge debate erupted over Choose Life, a SSMU club.
Heather Munroe-Blum, your princi-pal, in a daily article about her response to those events:
“The intimidation of protestors was so significant that students who were involved in the planning of the event were intimidated against continuing with [a controversial choose-life event]. I see this really as blight in the context of a university that is known worldwide for its academic freedom and freedom of speech…. I urge them to consider reconvening the event right away.”
And your provost, “the enforcer” Anthony Masi, in the same article:
“We do have rules about where the line is, but the fact of the matter is that we expect major disagreements to be the norm on our campus. Differences of points of view are important, but not intimidation, silencing, or thought police.”
So, consider this your friendly reminder that unless you’re one of a select few protesters, it’s now illegal to wear a green MUNACA button in any McGill building, or on the enclosed downtown campus. You also can’t join a picket line that comes within four meters of McGill property. Holding up signs is prohibited as well.
Sounds kind of like thought-police to us…
UPDATES: McGill’s Admin has a persnickety letter out this morning explaining the move, including a link to the actual injunction. Also, it looks like students can still do whatever they damn well please (as long as they aren’t provoked by MUNACA members).
RUDIMENTS: Winning activities night, which is tonight AND tomorrow
First years – you’ve been here for more than two weeks already! Chances are, you’ve met just about everyone on your floor, and maybe even remember some of your friends of, er, circumstance from frosh! While it’ll be awesome to spend the rest of your time at McGill with these fine folks, we’d like to remind you that there are like twenty-thousand other amazing people here in this community, doing really cool things that you can be a part of, starting tonight!
That’s because tonight (and tomorrow), from 4-8 p.m., SSMU will host Fall Activities Night in the Shatner building (the same place you may have gone for campus swaps and the poster sale). You should absolutely go! That said, four thousand people, many of whom desperate to get involved, is a lot of people and emotion to try to cram into that building at once. It’ll be hot, claustrophobic, and chaotic. But don’t despair – there are things you can do to make your life easier!
- Go in with a plan. Try to decide what types of clubs you’re interested in scoping out before you enter the giant concrete abyss. The building is organized by the types of activities: campus media is in one section, dance groups in another, and so on. You can view the floor plans for the Basement, Second Floor, and Third Floor of the building in advance, which show where groups will generally be. If you’re looking for a specific group, you can also look it up in the master tables list.
- Give out a gmail address Your McGill email address is nifty, but will run out of space really, really quickly. It also takes forever to write down. Because many of the clubs you ‘sign up’ for at Activities Night will continue to send you messages for the next four years no matter what, you’ll also be really happy that gmail has a handy ‘filter messages like these’ function. You don’t have a gmail? You’re crazy – go get one. There are also some really nifty things you can do with your gmail address that will help you filter out unwanted messages later.
- Bring a small bag You’re going to be handed a lot of shit, that you may or may not look at ever again. There’s also a lot of free candy floating around. Holding it all at once is difficult. Bring a canvas tote, or something similarly unobtrusive to put your stuff in. Under no circumstances should you bring a backpack full of textbooks and course packs into Shatner. You will be sorry when you find yourself knocking over everyone’s table.
- TUESDAY = WEDNESDAY Wednesday is the exact same activities night as Tuesday, and will probably be less crowded. So go to that one, if you can.
- Remember that this isn’t your only chance to get involved Activities night can be really stressful. You might leave feeling a bit like you’ve just given a tonne of really happy, successful people your email address and received nothing in return but a few jolly ranchers. Remember that you can join almost any club or publication by wandering into a meeting or production night. In fact, you’ll probably get a better sense of what they’re about by doing just that – a four foot long table can be tough to gauge. And if all else fails, there’ll be another Activities Night in January!
GOOD LUCK!
This post is part of our rudiments series, which teaches you a few awesome things about being a member of this little community that we call home. Check out the other ones here.
McTavish becomes giant river
Just when you thought that the start of the semester couldn’t possibly get more interesting! A broken water main turned McTavish into an actually kind of horrifying five inch deep river yesterday, flooding out the lovely farmers market and the friendly MUNACA strikers. The Daily has some great pictures of people trying to get out of the way of the river’s path. Nobody was hurt, but the damage was pretty extensive.
The library basements, along with the already-mostly-closed service point and a bunch of other McGill buildings were flooded, but are now apparently open (and dank?). The same can’t be said for Wilson Hall (the nursing building), which is closed today, with classes moved to alternate locations.
The actual street is open again to foot traffic, although CTV reported that a sinkhole was developing at the corner of McTavish and Dr. Penfield. We all know what happens when those get bigger, so we advise sensible folks to STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM THAT INTERSECTION.
The cause of the break is being blamed on a faulty pump, or something, but some students were quick to point to the administration’s ulterior motives.
What's with the flood outside McGill? Did HMB use the water canons against MUNACA? #sowetforpensions
@yrfather
Isaac A. T. Gielen
Update: The Daily has a helpful story, with a few reactions to the flood. As well, McGill has posted a listing of room changes for those with classes in Wilson today.
City spends $10,000 to make pavement green
On August 23, CTV News broke the scoop that it cost the city of Montreal $10 000 dollars to install a green bike box on the corner of Milton and University. This corner, better known as the place in the winter with the person-engulfing puddle, sees heavy bike traffic and will serve as a bike safety trial project. The article states that the seemingly cheap to design bike box costs $10 000 dollars because it is covered in non-skid plastic (indiscernible to the naked eye). Because the cost explanation still seems dubious, The Bubble set out to discover what other things one could do with $10 000 dollars.
Unofficial list:
- buy 4000 beers at frosh
- cover the AUS’s anticipated operating debt
- buy 294 gallons of paint at Benjamin moore
- buy 5.5 ounces of gold (wow gold is pricey).
- Fly a professional artist from France to paint the bike figure in the box (2000 dollars), put him up at a first class hotel for 3 days (1500 dollars), give him 100 cans
- of paint (4000 dollars). That’s still not 10000.
- Buy a paper shredder to shred 10000 dollars to mix in with paint, to give the box its distinctive green glow.
- Buy presumably a fair amount of Jobbook stock
- Get 10 mcgill sweaters at the book store (those things are expensive)
- Could purchase 666 months of the new york times online (55.5 years)
- Buy a whole lot of anti skid plastic
- Build a bike lane separated from car traffic instead of a box
- Add more in the comments!
If it’s any solace, people will now have creative license to use the word box more, eg: “Hey dude, meet me at the box,” “Dude, that’s so (green) box,” “Did you hear the corner of Milton and Uni has an all you can eat Jack in The Box (makes little sense).”
Additionally, The Bubble is also handing out 2/1 odds that the bike box will survive a Montreal winter. Colour us skeptical.
Things that would be terrible: If all of McGill’s non-academic staff go on strike on Thursday morning
A heads up, of sorts: McGill’s union of non-academic staff, who do things like schedule courses, run the libraries, and provide all sorts of services to students warned the University that it will go on strike on Thursday at 6:00 a.m. if a number of its demands are not met in negotiations. At issue is a wage scale that the union says is the worst of all Universities in Quebec. You can read about all of their demands (in very large, bold fonts) on MUNACA’s website.
McGill hasn’t made any public statements on the strike threat yet, which is a bit odd given the fact that it could make the first day of classes… well… interesting. The most likely source of frustration would probably come from the shutdown of the university’s registration and scheduling team, which will undoubtedly make add/drop a complete mess. You also probably won’t be able to get your ID card replaced, your transfer or study abroad credits accepted, or do any of the other frustrating bureaucratic things that many of us have to do at the beginning of a new year.
Our advice? Do any critical McGill bureaucratic work on Tuesday or Wednesday! Even if it requires waiting in incredibly long lines (or mysterious service point ‘queue’). Try not to lose your ID card! And spend some time talking to the (potentially) picketing workers – they probably have pretty good reasons for stopping work (and choosing to forego pay).
Welcome (back) to Montreal!
For those of our readers who spent the past few months doing research internships in Africa, working at Starbucks in Brooklyn, or otherwise domiciled outside of Montreal, the city has missed you… well sort of. Memories of Festivals, terrasses, parks, outdoor markets and an empty green campus have now been completely erased with the flood of students (and rain) who have moved in this weekend. Avenue des Pins is once again covered in pee-pee and empty beer bottles and the ghetto is a dangerous place to leave a car unattended . Big changes have happened on campus, which the Bubble will cover in due time! Grassy boobs on McTavish? Oh yeah! $10,000 in green bike lane…paint? Sounds like a bargain! Interesting items discovered in AUS frosh bags? More classes cut? BEER TENT CLOSED? NOOOO! It’s all coming soon!
In the meantime, please amuse yourself by reading the following guides to Montreal!
- http://www.montreal.com/
- http://newtomontreal.com/
- http://www.montrealmirror.com/wp/2010/10/07/city-living-2010/ Montreal Mirror’s City Living Guide!
- http://www.montrealmirror.com/2010/051310/bom-01.html Montreal Mirror’s Best of Montreal!
- http://www.montrealmirror.com/wp/2010/09/02/student-survival-guide-2010/ Montreal Mirror’s Student Survival Guide!
Love,
The Bubble
