McGill gives you wings
I was reading in the library this morning when a voice behind me suddenly offered “the gift of energy!” I turned to find a woman holding a Red Bull with a smile. “No thanks,” I said, and turned back to work with a kind of self-righteous energy better than any Red Bull addict will ever know. It was not long before I realized that I am offered Red Bull on campus nearly as much as I’m offered weed in Jeanne Mance park – and I feel much less violated in Jeanne Mance.
Attending McGill shouldn’t feel like going to a movie downtown: paying $11 to sit through a half-hour of commercials. I imagine McGill has nothing to do with Red Bull, but they certainly could have more to do with keeping them off our campus. And this issue is miniscule compared to the grievances of those who are fighting to reclaim our campus. The SACOMSS fiasco is unforgivable in itself. The TA situation was “resolved,” perhaps explaining why they are no longer situated in any of my classrooms.
Despite what some say, I have no doubt that I have witnessed McGill systematically choose reputation over education during the past four years. I’ve met enough kids from Columbia University – and went to a sufficiently “elite” high school – to know that reputation isn’t everything; it is, with few exceptions, synonymous with money. You don’t have to agree with each student group on all fronts – I know that I certainly don’t. But if you have even the slightest argument with McGill’s current direction, anywhere from Red Bull to tuition, I urge you to share your voice with those already rallying to reclaim our campus for its primary purposes: education and community.
David Eisenach
U3 English Literature
A real good shoot ‘em up
Re: “The great safe inject debate” | Mind & Body | Sept. 4, 2008
The supporters of the safe-inject sites are talking about some statistics that supposedly show these sites actually help, but they forget the main point. They should instead consider the number of drug addicts in Canada, and according to Statistics Canada, there more than 3-million, or one in every ten Canadians have used drugs in the last year at least once. With this scary reality, society should not turn its back on those people by letting them “shoot themselves up”.
Julien Montreuil’s argument that addicts can only quit if they are “ready to work on it themselves” is immature and anti-social. It shows a basic lack of understanding of the dangers that drugs hide – if those people were to quit on their own, they wouldn’t even start!
It’s society’s responsibility to battle this pandemic by making sure addicts are placed in detox even if they don’t fully understand it in this difficult moment. Stop treating addicts like kids and stop neglecting the moral principles that this society is based on by allowing such self-destructing practices.
Alexander Kunev
U2 Mechanical Engineering
Le Majumdar magnifique
retourne!
Re: “Arts Undergraduate Society sued by their own for $14,000” | News | Sept. 8, 2008; “It’s time to care about international fees” | Commentary | Sept. 8, 2008
Geoffrey Hall (“AUS sued”) is not an “alumni” of McGill. He is an alumnus. Unless there are two of him or something.
Thanks for finally noticing the international fee issue. Perhaps you’d also like to look at the special treatment handed out to students from countries like France and Luxembourg, who actually end up paying less than someone from India or China. Or Alberta. Shouldn’t the fees be lower for people from developing rather than developed countries, if they are different at all? If it helps, French is an official language in India.
Also, can we really blame the Principal? I detested paying my international fees (especially when Quebec and French students are studying for relatively nothing). But McGill does have about three times as many undergrads as Harvard, with about a thirty-fifth of the endowment. If McGill’s primary responsibility is to Quebec and Canada, then this discrimination – distasteful as it may be – is understandable. Can we have some more numbers on this?
Manosij Majumdar
U2 Chemical Engineering
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