Students who dragged themselves out of bed and onto campus last Thursday might have noticed that James McGill got a fancy new coat of pink paint. Our devoted readers may remember that last week, Queen Victoria got a fancy new coat of green paint. We reported that Big Suze was allegedly responsible for Victoria’s makeover. In a surprising turn of events, our sources have informed us that Suze may have struck again with this recent artistic development on campus.
We have to wonder what Big Suze’s intentions are with regards to her colour choices. What does bubblegum pink signify for her? Is it a reference to “millennial pink,” possibly an attempt to appeal to the youth at McGill? Maybe she is aware that the student body is largely opposed to James McGill and wants to demonstrate her solidarity with us.
Maybe the pink paint on McGill’s hat refers to the “pussy hats” of the neoliberal feminist movement. Is Big Suze a secret white feminist? Does she want to impose her political agenda onto our university’s namesake? Ideally, Big Suze would promote feminism on campus without romanticizing the racist colonizer that is James McGill. Do better, Suze.
James McGill was buried alongside his (male) accountant, with whom he also went on long vacations to isolated romantic locales. Maybe Big Suze is celebrating his queerness to make the university seem more progressive than it really is. Maybe she’s jumping on the academic bandwagon of “queering” discourse. If so, we condemn her actions as appropriative and insensitive.
We urge Big Suze to leave an artist’s statement next time she chooses to give a racist statue a makeover so that we know what she’s trying to say to us. Until then, we can only speculate about her true motives.
