We're taking December off!

Hey readers!

Sorry there isn't a Daily out today, we're taking the rest of the month off to, you know, study. We'll be back in early January with tons more content and a semester full of packed issues.

• The Editors

Posted at 08:03PM on Dec 06, 2009

Take the Daily's user survey!

Hey folks,

We just put out an issue on The University we Want, and now, we'd like to know what kind of Daily you want!

Take a few minutes to fill out our survey at mcgilldaily.com/usersurvey

Posted at 09:48PM on Dec 02, 2009

It's Student Journalism Week!

Hi everyone, This week the McGill Daily and Le Délit, in collaboration with TV McGill and CKUT-Radio, invite you to participate in a multitude of workshops and events relating to media. It's the perfect opportunity to explore your interest in communications and develop some practical skills. For a full schedule of events, check out:

mcgilldaily.com/journalismweek

– The Editors

Posted at 12:10AM on Nov 09, 2009

Comments work again!

A quick note – today, we're happy to announce that comments are once again enabled on our web site. Enjoy!

Will Vanderbilt
Web Editor

Posted at 05:09PM on Oct 14, 2009

Comments are disabled - we're working on it.

Hey there web-readers,

Last night, we did a big ol' switcher-ooo on the system that runs our web site. As a result, there are still a few kinks to work out: like comments, and some advertising. Please bear with us, all will be well soon. And once all is well, we'll have a much more capable web site - the benefits of which you'll start to see sooner than you think!

Do you have ideas to make it better? Email me, at web [at] mcgilldaily.com.

Cheers,

Will Vanderbilt
Online Editor

Posted at 07:40AM on Sep 22, 2009

Do you know someone whose travel to Mexico is now banned?

Hey there readers,

In accordance with its new travel directive instated this year, McGill has banned all university-related travel to mexico. Do you know someone whose summer plans have been affected? Let us know in the comments (we can see your email address), or email news@mcgilldaily.com.

The Editors

Posted at 03:19AM on Apr 29, 2009

New content every Monday, all summer long!

And you thought we were done!

Summer tends to be the time that McGill's administrators push through changes without the watchful eye of the campus press, like the 2007 attempted closure of the Architecture cafe. Not any more! We'll be keeping tabs on campus news all summer, and posting something new on our web site at least every Monday.

This week, check out a Hyde Park from the former director of Gardner Hall, and a culture story on Kid Koala. As well, you can keep us posted on what you'd like to see us cover - just email coordinating@mcgilldaily.com, or leave a comment here.

Good luck on your final exams, and keep an eye on our page for the next few months.

• The Editors

Posted at 12:31AM on Apr 14, 2009

A big ol' last issue

All forty eight pages of today's daily (sitting on a newstand near you right now!) are taking us a bit of extra time to get up on the web site. Check out our lead stories here for now, and a bit later this afternoon, we'll have everything else uploaded! If you run out of things to read, pick up a printed copy on a stand near you.

-The Editors

Posted at 06:26PM on Apr 06, 2009

Announcing the 2009-2010 Editorial Board

Following a marathon 5 and one half hour election, The Daily proudly announces its Editorial Board for the 2009-2010 Academic year.

Coordinating Editor
Stephen Davis

Coordinating News Editor
Erin Hale

News Editors
Niko Block
Humera Jabir
Sam Neylon

Features Editor
Whitney Mallett

Coordinating Culture Editor
Amelia Schonbek

Culture Editors
Ian Beattie
Nick Boisvert-Novak

Commentary and Compendium Editor
William M. Burton

Mind&Body Editor
Braden Goyette

Science+Technology Editor
Diane Salema

Photo Editor
Dominic Popowich

Graphics Editor
Sasha Plotnikova

Production and Design Editors
Aaron Vansintjan
Kady Paterson

Copy Editor
Hannah Freeman

Web Editor
Will Vanderbilt

Posted at 07:02AM on Apr 01, 2009

Art Sup deadline extended

As a gift to you all, we've decided to extend the deadline for submissions to The Daily's Art Supplement until Monday, March 2nd. That way, you'll have plenty of time to work on your last minute ideas over break.

Send your work to dailyartsup@gmail.com.

The Art Sup committee

Posted at 06:41PM on Feb 23, 2009

Want to make out on the cover of The McGill Daily?

Hi loyal readers!

The Daily is working on a crazy little cover idea, and to make it happen, we want to take pictures of you, making out with your partner, or any other person of your choosing. If you're free tomorrow, and the two of you are cool with having yourselves printed in beautiful color on 11,000 copies of your campus newspaper, email photos@mcgilldaily.com ASAP.

Thanks,

Stephen Davis
Photo Editor

Posted at 11:11PM on Feb 03, 2009

I would council against that: Liveblogging SSMU Council

At five minutes before the scheduled start time of SSMU Council, there are three people in the Lev Bukhman Council Room in the Shatner Building, not including your hapless news editor forced to cover this event. At least this will give me some time to work out the kinks to this system.

Anyway, here's to kicking off the first ever liveblog of a SSMU Council meeting: come for the wit, stay for the legislating!

6:08: I disappear for ten minutes to the Daily office and suddenly we nearly have quorum. And based on the agenda, I may actually be out of here before midnight. Ooh, call to order, let's go!

6:10:After flying through the minutes, we have 9 changes to the agenda, all but one alerting us about motions next week (during a special council meeting after the GA!) for fee referenda, a by-law change, and a constitution change about the GA. The last moved the order of two items in the agenda.

6:15:The sudden realisation that there will Council three weeks in a row, along with a GA next week and BoG, Senate, and a Town Hall the week after makes me be giddy and sick at the same time.

6:17: Announcements. Engineers won some engineering games, GA posters have arrived, education career fair and management sustainability conference.

6:18: Super Bowl party at Gerts on Sunday. Since it's organized by SSMU and not McGill Democrats Abroad, it will probably have SSMU-style turnout.

6:21: Jana Luker, McGill Executive Director of Student Services, is addressing SSMU on her role. A dizzying set of positions at this school means someone, like me as of this month, is pension-eligible.

6:24: Luker has been here for just over a year, apparently. Even being at The Daily that whole time, I don't remember her at all; shows what I know.

6:26: She just apologized for being from Ontario. Don't worry, Jana: half The Daily is. (I really wish there was something to comment on, but that should pick up when questions start. Ah, here we go.)

6:28: Councillor Jose Diaz (no accents on this computer) is asking about anonymous HIV testing at McGill not being completely anonymous. He just mentioned reading an article in "a campus newspaper," and I know we tried to run a story on this, but in the end I think what we thought was true wasn't, so we didn't run it, especially as I can't seem to find it online.

6:34: The ombudsperson is stalling due to a lack of qualified applicants, according to SSMU VP University Affairs Nadya Wilkinson, who sits on a committee which I believe is looking for applicants. She took over answering the question, as Luker isn't really in charge of that.

6:37: Complaints about waiting time and McGill's drop-in health clinic. Luker admits they are short on doctors and medical staff; story of Health Care, isn't it?

6:40: I think Luker just said SSMU Council is "the most powerful organization at McGill." I was right; she hasn't ever been to a Council meeting.

6:44: The Inclusive Language Policy was changed to the Inclusive Language Guidelines because, according to Luker, it was easier to get passed. As an aside, she just mentioned on how the root of Ombudsman is Danish meaning that historically it's not gendered, and so not actually uninclusive, but still thinks it's better to have these guidelines so nomenclature is bilingual and un-gendered.

6:50: Luker called her office "probably the worst example of bilingualism," but she's learning, and she seems sympathetic. And lo and behold, it's Nordic; almost as good as having Katherine Barber advising you.

7:02: I spent the last ten minutes browsing the council docs. As Luker just said, she rambles; after a while, I could barely hear her over the AC that's being blasted right next to the windows. It's -6 degrees Celsius; you would think that there would be a more energy-efficient way to cool a room that's surrounded on two sides by wall-to-ceiling windows than by blasting AC three inches from those windows!

7:07: A permanent home for the McGill Student-Parent Network, now in the McGill Chaplancy, will be pitched for the next budget. The wheels turn.

7:15: Councillors were waked from their sleeping stupor by the rest of them banging the tables, thanking Luker for coming. Question Period time.

7:16: Question Period is over, as the only person who spoke just asked for an explanation later during Exec reports. Which start now. Whee!

7:17: VP Internal Julia Webster is speeding through this report, covering French arriving on the developing SSMU web site "in a couple of weeks" (we'll see), and a report on the new beer contract. The Financial Ethics Review Committee will review the beer suppliers, the proposals will go out "approximately after reading week" (i.e. early March), the negotiations will start "mid to late March" and the signing will happen in "May." This corner applauds what will likely be the fastest SSMU tender, negotiation, and signing process for a contract in its history, bucking the trend of the last few contracts that have taken 6-12 months and are still not finished.

7:23: VP University Affairs Nadya Wilkinson described some dense discussions about university governance that are detailed in the Council documents. Trust me, you don't want to read it, so if there's anything interesting in there, we'll let you know.

7:25: Question on the travel directive, also with dense changes that should be in an article in The Daily on Monday. Of note is Student Services asking for a $7.50/semester increase in their fee to students. SSMU is still trying to decide if this is inflationary (at or under inflation, in which case Council may pass or reject it itself or send it to referendum) or non-inflationary (greater than inflation, in which case students will get the opportunity to vote on it directly during the referendum period).

7:28: Wilkinson said the admin is trying to only ask for higher fees for what's absolutely necessary, to which Wilkinson said she thought "How high will it be when they really let go?"

7:30: Wilkinson says there will now be a waiver to sign as part of the new travel policy, but that the admin spent much time previously saying waivers weren't valid in Quebec (you can't sign away your personal liability), so she wants them to square this. So do we.

7:33: The Deputy Provost will attend a Town Hall about the travel directive if requested. That would be interesting to liveblog through!

7:39: And lastly, according to Wilkinson, there have been some concerns raised about investments in London Mining, based on open-pit mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but the Financial Ethics Review Committee didn't reach quorum when they tried to talk about it, so they'll try again. The only thing I could find with quick Googling was this, but given it's a mining company, there's probably something else they're doing that's harming the environment.

7:44: Referring to a friend of hers being a cheerleader at the Super Bowl last year, "I lie at Council all the time," said VP Clubs and Services Samantha Cook. If only this kind of sarcasm was shown at every deliberative body we cover. Otherwise, the Finance Committee is having trouble reaching its quorum of four, given there are only four remaining members. Nuff said.

7:49: President Turner has been handling questions about the upcoming General Assembly motions, one in particular. I, like Turner, will suggest you figure out yourself which is the controversial one. (No, it's not the GA reform one, although that will likely be controversial too.)

7:53: Councillors want to know what will happen if they run out of capacity at the General Assembly (in the Shatner 2nd floor cafeteria; apparently the poor staff will have to remove all the tables). Overflow in the ballroom connected via Skype is one of many ideas. I sympathize; it's always so tricky to plan these things: either SSMU expects its usual less-than-quorum turnout and the room is so filled the fire marshalls are called, or they plan for massive turnout and there are so few people that a few students talk a dozen times each. Either way, there's always room for an amusing yet depressing headline in the next Daily.

8:05: Turner touches on many points we'll be discussing Friday, so I took a few more minutes to browse the Council docs. Now on to the Equity Officer(s).

8:08: There were complaints about Choose Life, the pro-life group that will probably be applying for full club status in the next week or two. Wilkinson (along with Turner) agree that there was nothing objectionable enough in their recent actions to violate their (SSMU) Constitutional right to free speech by being a club. Choose life is offering some constitutional changes to their club mandate, particularily to not be providing post-abortion and pregnancy "advice" (I believe that's the word used) and now it will just be "information."

8:19: The Clubs and Services Committee Report explains clubs that have status changes. They have footnotes and everything, including one after explaining that doing internships in Sri Lanka might be problematic "according to the really awesome McGill administrative policies [footnote: Withers, Alison. "Travel directive to restrain research". McGill Daily. http://www.mcgilldaily.com/article/5188-travel-directive-to-restrain-research ]". Drink.

8:23: Also from the report: "The Cunning Linguists wants to change their name to The League of Linguists. While infinitely less funny, we could not in good conscience deny them this name change." I bet they were fearing and Equity Officer complaint. And later: "They tried to pass off two pizza parties and one movie night as three events related to their mandate. Nice try." Short and sarcastic; could these committee members have a chat with the long and dry councillors? Thanks in advance.

8:29: Back to what to do about a General Assembly overflow, apparently there has been a committee discussing this, and each councillor was supposed to distribute and collect five surveys about GAs (a committee member said he saw no more than 15). Even if that's a minimum, that's not a high standard to work with, even for SSMU. Then again, when The Daily did its end of year survey two years ago, we got 19 (so low that I actually remembered the number before finding the link), so maybe it's not our place to criticize. (To be fair, we were up in the hundreds when we put the survey online.)

8:36: According to President Turner, people want to change the by-laws that refer to the Green Fee so they reflect "what the framers intended." Wow, modesty. I know SSMU is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, but this fee is not old enough to have "framers." Sorry.

8:40: No by-law changes tonight (again!), because Council is one to three seats short of (two-thirds required) quorum (only 19 or 20 or 21, according to the many counts, out of 32, not counting the three vacancies). You know, it'd probably be easier to get 15 per cent of students to vote in the referendum/election period in March than get two-thirds of Council to show up to meetings they're required to attend. Email your crazy ideas to speaker@ssmu.mcgill.ca.

8:51: There's a speaker here from Le Collectif pour un Quebec sans pauvrete, which is campaigning for a cost-of-living increase to some sort of financial benefit for social programs, and to raise the minimum wage to $10.16/hr so that anyone working full-time will earn enough to be above the poverty line. (The minimum wage is currently $8.50/hr, and will rise to $9/hr in May and $9.50/hr a year after that. Here are historical rates.) We were dealing with the poverty line just last night at The Daily, as there's no universal definition; here's one story about it.

The most common measure, called the Low Income Cut-off by Statistics Canada, is $21,666 after tax for 2009 for one person in this province. Which, based on a 40-hour work week, that means you'd need to earn $10.41/hr after tax, and based on a 35 per cent tax and a $10,000 base tax-free amount, means you'd have to earn about $14.50/hr before tax.

Anyway, as you can see, this is a complicated issue, and councillors asked a number of decent questions while I was putting together the past two paragraphs (which answer many of them, so hopefully they're reading this). So after all that, and two 30-second speeches of support for supporting this initiative, Council voted almost unanimously (one opposed, two abstentions) to support this motion. And that's that.

9:10: Anyway, it appears we're nearing the end of the open meeting (only the confidential session after this), so I'm about to sign off. I hope my three readers enjoyed this, but now I can use this to write any story that goes in The Daily on Monday instead of my scribbly, hand-written notes.

9:11: Oh, no confidential session, so we're adjourned, probably one of the fastest Councils I've been to in my nearly two years covering them. And still 49 minutes to get to the SAQ; so long everyone!

Posted at 12:59AM on Jan 30, 2009

a shindig invite for Tuesday

Hey all,

Our last issue of the year (gasp!) hit the stands today, and we're ready to celebrate the end of lovely semester. Join editors, writers, friends, and lovers Tuesday at Copacabana (3910 St. Laurent) around 10:30 p.m.

Be there or be square. We're serious.

Love, The EdBoard

Posted at 08:46PM on Dec 01, 2008

The Daily needs a Science + Technology editor!

Do you enjoy science, technology, and independent student journalism? The Daily is looking to elect a Sci+Tech editor for the Winter term! If you're interested contact scitech@mcgilldaily.com, or coordinating@mcgilldaily.com.

As with all Daily elections, you must be Daily staff to run for an editorial position. To become staff, we must have printed any combination of six articles and/or graphics created by you by the date of the election. Features count as two articles.

Candidate statements are due to coordinating@mcgilldaily.com by midnight on November 28th, and we'll hold the candidate rundown on Monday, December 1. The election will take place Tuesday, December 2. Look for locations and times in upcoming issues!

-The Editors

Posted at 06:41AM on Nov 18, 2008

Journalism Week

The DPS is hosting Journalism Week! Check out the panels on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and workshops on Thursday.

Information on the panels is below. Find more about the workshops and an open production night on the Facebook event.

Monday, November 10

Breaking Into Journalism: Employment, Internships, and Freelancing Arts building, room W-150, 5:00 p.m. A panel discussion with a National Post editor, a freelance journalist, and a photography intern from the New York Times.

Tuesday, November 11

Our Unfree Press: Alternative Media and Media Criticism Chancellor Day Hall, room 200, 5:30 p.m. A panel discussion with representatives from CKUT Radio, the Hour, the Independent Media Centre, and Siafu magazine.

Wednesday, November 12

Francophone Media: Tips From Local Journos Shatner building, room B-30, 5:00 p.m. A panel discussion with a Le Devoir editor and a La Presse photojournalist. (en français)

Posted at 08:29PM on Nov 07, 2008