Gaza: the deadliest place in the world to be a journalist

On August 10, 2025, a targeted Israeli airstrike on a media tent outside Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital killed Al-Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, along with three of his colleagues. Al-Jazeera called it a “blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom.” The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) confirmed that the strike was the single deadliest attack on media workers since the Israel–Gaza war began in October 2023. Al- Sharif’s final social media post, quoted in The Guardian, read: “If these words reach you … Israel has succeeded in killing me.” The words have since echoed as a plea not to let Gaza disappear from global attention.

Al-Sharif, only 28, had become one of the most familiar faces reporting from Gaza in his commitment to showing the city’s suffering under bombardment. Israel later claimed without offering verifiable proof, that Al-Sharif was “the head of a terrorist cell,” a characterization widely rejected by press freedom organizations as unsubstantiated. Press freedom organizations, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, rejected the accusation without credible evidence, describing it as an unsubstantiated smear likely intended to justify an attack on a journalist. Al-Sharif’s killing prompted a wave of protests and vigils worldwide, from Cape Town and Manila to London, Mexico City, Dublin, Oslo, Berlin, Karachi, and Ramallah. Demonstrators in Houston also gathered outside a local TV station, denouncing media misrepresentation of Gaza and calling for justice for the slain journalists. This has prompted calls from PEN America and from UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, for an independent investigation into whether the deliberate targeting of journalists may constitute as a war crime.

The number of journalists killed in Gaza has not been verified. According to the United Nations, 242 journalists have been killed since October 2023. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reports at least 180, while the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) puts the figure at 192, making it the deadliest conflict for journalists on record. Regardless of the estimation, the reality for journalists in Gaza is grim. With foreign media effectively barred from entering Gaza, local journalists carry the weight of documenting the war. Their deaths create information black holes at a time when knowledge is most needed.

The United States: hostility turned into policy

The United States has long styled itself as a champion of free press, but recent developments tell a more complicated story. On July 29, 2025, Federal Communications Commissioner Anna Gomez formally issued a dissent against the FCC’s approval of the Paramount– Skydance merger. She warned that the government’s approach to media regulation amounts to “a campaign of censorship and control,” expressing her concern for the erosion of media independence.

Congress has also responded to the growing hostility toward the press. In May 2025, the Senate introduced Resolution 205, a measure condemning Donald Trump’s repeated denunciations of the press and restating the U.S. commitment to press freedom as a democratic cornerstone. Though S.Res. 205 has yet to pass, its introduction signals official concern within Congress about the growing normalization of anti-press rhetoric, especially following repeated attacks by then- President Trump on the “fake news” media, a trend widely denounced as a threat to democratic norms. He has, during his presidency, branded journalists as “enemies of the people.” This language, once shocking, has troublingly become part of mainstream political language in the US.

That hostility is not confined to political rhetoric, it has material consequences on the ground, where reporters covering protests and immigration enforcement have been detained or threatened with deportation. In June, DeKalb County police arrested Atlanta journalist Mario Guevara while he was livestreaming a protest, and local authorities handed him over to ICE custody just days after all criminal charges had been dropped. He remains in immigration detention despite being granted bond, a case press-freedom advocates, including the ACLU, CPJ, Free Press, and the Atlanta Press Club, have described as a “grim erosion of both freedom of the press and the rule of law”. A month later, Covington police arrested two CityBeat journalists, reporter Madeline Fening and intern Lucas Griffith, while covering a protest, drawing criticism from press-freedom groups. Both initially faced felony rioting charges, which were later dismissed. They now continue to face several misdemeanor charges, including disorderly conduct and failure to disperse. Advocacy groups, led by the National Press Club, denounced the arrests as “a direct assault on the First Amendment,” asserting that using criminal charges to intimidate journalists is unacceptable.

This trend within the United States has been observed internationally. Reporters Without Borders confirms that in 2025, the United States ranked 57th out of 180 countries, now classified in a “problematic situation”, on the World Press Freedom Index. They have attributed the decline to heightened political hostility, economic instability, and corporate consolidation. CPJ’s own assessment of Trump’s first 100 days back in office concluded that press freedom is “no longer a given.”

Kenya: silencing dissent on live television

Across the globe in Nairobi, the press is also under pressure. On June 25, amid nationwide protests over police brutality and government corruption, the Kenyan government banned live TV coverage, ordered broadcasters off air, and disrupted transmissions. During the protests, NTV journalist Ruth Sarmwei was struck by a rubber bullet while reporting live, and at least one other journalist was also injured.

The High Court of Kenya swiftly intervened. Justice Chacha Mwita ruled that the ban violated constitutional protections for free expression and ordered the Communications Authority to restore broadcasts. In response, the Law Society of Kenya, joined by over 20 civil society groups, condemned the directive as “a dangerous step towards suppressing fundamental freedoms.” They warned that even in a democracy, such tactics signal how quickly media freedom can be revoked when authorities feel their narrative is threatened. Human rights groups say this reflects a deeper erosion: Kenya is often upheld as a regional model for media freedom, yet security forces routinely crack down on journalists during periods of political unrest.

A worldwide pattern of control

These episodes of censorship, intimidation, and violence against journalists are not isolated. In Gaza, the IDF is killing journalists at an unprecedented rate. In the United States, political hostility and regulatory maneuvering are shrinking media independence. In Kenya, broadcast bans and state intimidation curtail citizens’ access to information.

The 2025 World Press Freedom Index by RWB described the global media landscape as “difficult,” warning that even established democracies are slipping. Gaza, in particular, stands out for its unprecedented journalist death toll, but the crisis is not only about violence. Reporters Without Borders emphasizes that economic fragility, manifesting through shrinking newsroom resources, reliance on political advertisers, and corporate consolidation, has become an increasingly insidious threat to press freedom. This has left media outlets more exposed to censorship, disinformation, and undue influence from political and economic elites.

Why this matters

When Al-Jazeera declared after al-Sharif’s death that “targeting journalists is targeting the truth itself,” the statement echoed warnings from press freedom groups that such attacks undermine democracy and the public’s right to know. A free press is often described as democracy’s “fourth estate,” underscoring its role in holding institutions accountable. In Gaza, killing reporters ensures that atrocities remain unseen. In Washington DC, political hostility and regulatory maneuvering are eroding media independence and undermining accountability. In Nairobi, blackouts deprive citizens of real-time information during protests. The National Public Radio recently put it this way: when journalists are harassed or killed, “the public loses its most vital connection to accountability.”

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David Suzuki, academic and climate activist, made headlines earlier this year with a sobering statement on climate action: “It’s too late.”

The reverberating panic in activist spaces was immediate: “if David Suzuki’s given up, we’re really screwed!”

Admittedly, he hasn’t given up, per se. But rather than calling for large-scale legal, economic or policy changes — as he has for decades — he is now encouraging communities to build resilience in the face of the climate crisis. Suzuki’s new stance might be apt, as we have surpassed six of the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s nine planetary boundaries which define our habitable Earth: climate change, biogeochemical flows, freshwater change, land system change, biosphere integrity, and novel entities— synthetic chemicals emitted by technological developments. Yet investments in fossil fuel capital continue to grow, alongside climate anxiety and ensuing feelings of defeatism.

By the end of the 2010s, climate activism had obtained immense popularity, especially among youth and students. Greta Thunberg’s Fridays For Future movement was the most visible of its type — inspiring school strikes, protests, and die-ins by young people around the world. Protests calling for the Canadian government to ban fossil fuels had reached a fever pitch, or so it seemed.

Then, the unprecedented chaos of 2020 changed it all. During these years, the world grappled with illness, social isolation, economic uncertainty, police brutality, and countless other injustices. However, in the face of those challenges, we showed an unprecedented capacity for collective action. The New York Times called the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement the largest protest movement in U.S. history, with between 15 and 26 million participants.

Ironically, amidst all this politicization and protest, the climate movement fell flat on its back.

Although the pandemic is over, climate activism has not recovered. The Canadian Press
calls the current Canadian government “noncommittal about meeting 2030 climate goals” and climate issues have been pushed to the back of the Canadian mind. However, they fuel every other issue we face. The climate crisis is not impending, it is current. Places across the world, including Iraq, Somalia, and the Gulf Coast of the United States, are experiencing extreme natural disasters that herald a new era of climate devastation. Meanwhile, the school strikes, marches, and dialogue around climate action are notably absent from the global stage. In a sense, it is “too late” to prevent the catastrophe we predicted decades ago. But is it too late to call for government action, and to limit the scope of destruction?

To answer this question, I interviewed McGill students from a range of fields and backgrounds. I wanted to know whether climate defeatism has taken hold of our student body and whether McGill students see a path forward through this crisis. I wanted to know whether we, as students and as global citizens, can still be mobilized in the name of climate action.

My first conversation was with Cam*, a U2 student double majoring in Physics and Latin
American and Caribbean Studies. Cam has been involved in climate activism since the age of 12. I asked him what he thought about environmental defeatism.

“The idea that we won’t face catastrophic climate change is a fallacy,” he claimed, “but I am not a defeatist in that I don’t believe there is nothing left to be done.”

It is a daunting thought that catastrophe will strike regardless of the action we take now. Cam knows that “the rest of [his] life will be spent in a constant battle to mitigate the
effects of fossil fuel emissions.” And yet, we can still lessen these effects by taking a stand against the fossil fuel industry. “There’s an infinite amount of difference [between] category 5 hurricanes happening twice a year and four times a year…every human life is a massive difference.” says Cam.

For every degree of warming and every extreme weather event, human lives hang in the
balance. Such high stakes have led to ample debate over the best protest practices; namely, whether or not peaceful protest is enough.

“[New fossil fuel investment] is a crime,” Cam told me, “not just against society but against humanity as a whole. So I think that as citizens of Earth, it’s completely justified to take direct action.”

According to the Activist Handbook, direct action can refer to a range of physical tactics, from civil disobedience to property destruction and violence. In his notable book How to Blow up a Pipeline, climate activist and author Andreas Malm asserts that historically, direct action has proven to be highly effective in toppling status-quo systems, and was instrumental in ending oppressive regimes throughout the 20th century, from racial segregation in the United States to Israeli occupation of Lebanon to South African apartheid.

While direct action involves higher physical and legal risk to protesters, and is not always
popular with the masses, many argue that it is sometimes necessary to make a movement heard. Cam pointed out that “resistance is not the same as assault. The destruction of the physical infrastructure of fossil capital is completely justified, [and] it is something we should be doing more of.”

To investigate the feeling underlying student inaction, I talked to Max*, a U2 Biology and
Philosophy major who characterizes himself as a “realist.” Max is skeptical of the
power of protest, especially radical protest which might alienate those unfamiliar with the movement.

“Government structures are set in place […] and they’re very protected,” Max pointed out,
when asked whether he thinks protests are effective in promoting systemic progress.
“The best way to create impactful change is not to try to dismantle social structures from the bottom up. It’s to infiltrate and move top-down.”

Top down initiatives for climate action have been advocated for and attempted ad
nauseam over the last five-plus decades, to very little success: the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement, arguably the two most prominent top-down climate efforts, have been largely ineffective. John S. Dryzek and Jonathan Pickering, in their book The Politics of the Anthropocene, name the 1987 Montreal Protocol for protection of the ozone layer the only example of successful top-down climate action in history. This has pushed many frustrated people to campaign from the bottom up, through protests, civil disobedience, and NGOs. Young people like Cam describe a feeling of obligation to fight for climate action, from whichever elevation they can reach — Max is not one of these people, despite believing in the severity of the crisis.

“Everyone feels [obligated to] do the little things that provoke a more sustainable lifestyle,” he told me. “[But] I don’t think […] I have to go the extra mile.” Some further key insights came from Emily,* a U3 Biodiversity and Conservation major in the Bieler School of Environment. As an American studying in Canada, Emily has a valuable outside perspective on Canadian climate politics. Emily tells me that the current government’s stance on climate action reminds her of many previous U.S. administrations, which she says were characterized by a dissonance between words and actions.

“The executive branch is making speeches about the importance of this or that,” she said, “but it often stops at rhetoric and doesn’t continue into reshaping policies.” As an environment student, Emily’s coursework involves a lot of discussion about climate change, and the myriad potential approaches to the crisis. While she recognizes that full societal upheaval will be necessary, Emily also knows that critical change can also happen on a small scale.

“Speak with people about [climate change…] and [get] them to participate in lowering their consumption with you,” she told me, when asked what McGill students can do about the crisis. “Get them to do actions with you.”

In the face of government inaction, it is difficult to remain hopeful. But while Emily characterizes herself as “somewhere in between” climate optimism and defeatism, she definitely errs on the side of hope.

“There’s no capacity to maintain ‘normal life,’” Emily told me. But there is still room for optimism in her eyes. “The place where [it’s relevant to be] defeatist or optimistic is […] what degree of human rights will maintain themselves during the climate crisis,” she said. “I believe we have the capacity to confront the problems we’re facing.”

Let’s hope she’s right.

*All names have been changed for anonymity

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Adopted on May 30, 2025, Quebec’s Bill 89 amends the Labour Code to “give greater consideration to the needs of the population in the event of a strike or a lock-out,” by ensuring the continuation of “services ensuring the well-being of the population.” The Act empowers the government to designate disputes for review by the Administrative Labour Tribunal, which can order that such services be maintained and, if negotiations fail, impose conditions itself. While strikes and lock-outs may continue, they can be suspended in “exceptional circumstances.” According to Evan Fox-Decent, law professor
and president of the Association of McGill Professors of Law, “this legislation represents a frontal attack on workers’ fundamental rights.” For McGill faculty unions, this bill significantly curtails the effectiveness of strikes by limiting the possible leverage of work stoppages and narrowing the scope of legitimate collective action against the administration. This bill also generates a chilling climate of deterrence, where professors, staff, and students, fearing retaliation, may refrain from publicly endorsing or joining mobilizations. Without explicit backing from faculty unions, student strikes lose a crucial source of momentum and legitimacy, weakening student solidarity actions.

In April, the pro-Palestinian student group Students for Palestinian Honour and Resistance (SPHR) organized a three-day demonstration on campus calling for McGill to cut ties with institutions and companies linked to Israel. The university responded by securing an injunction from the Quebec Superior Court judge. The ruling barred protests within five metres of McGill buildings and prohibited activities that could disrupt classes or exams. While directly aimed at weakening SPHR, the injunction sets a broader precedent as the administration can now swiftly resort to the courts to neutralize any disruptive student mobilizations. This fosters a climate of self-censorship, especially since both protesters and “any person aware of the judgment,” even if they aren’t directly related to SPHR, can risk legal consequences. The spatial restrictions also undercut the visibility and effectiveness of protests, discouraging broader participation.

In the aftermath of the April protests, McGill attempted to terminate its contractual relationship with SSMU. The Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) is the formal contract that governs the relationship between McGill University and the Students’ Society of McGill University, outlining the rights, responsibilities, and financial arrangements between the two parties.

It gives SSMU official recognition as the undergraduate student association, allowing it to collect fees, use campus space, and represent students in dealings with the administration. In return, the MoA sets out standards of accountability, compliance with university regulations, and conditions under which the agreement can be reviewed or terminated. McGill can default on the MoA if it determines that SSMU has breached its obligations, such as failing to comply with university policies or legal requirements, since the MoA gives the administration the authority to terminate or suspend the agreement on those grounds.

McGill Interim Deputy Provost Angela Campbell accused the organization’s leadership of not dissociating itself from groups that “endorse or engage in acts of vandalism, intimidation and obstruction as forms of activism.” By moving to terminate this agreement, this threatened to strip SSMU of resources essential for organizing large-scale student movements, including funding, office space, and institutional recognition.

Following a mediation process of several months, McGill and SSMU announced that the MoA will remain in effect, with revisions. The agreement removed certain restrictions on SSMU election eligibility, while also reaffirming limits on protests that involve disruption of academic activities, vandalism, or intimidation. Although this resolution preserved the student union’s legal footing, it underscores how fragile the student unions’ position remains by demonstrating McGill’s willingness to use the threat of institutional withdrawal as leverage. Even with the renewed MoA, the imposed boundaries signal that student mobilization is tolerated only within tightly controlled parameters.

In essence, these developments leave students with fewer institutional resources, greater legal risks, and diminished means of mobilizing, as they have increasingly become
vulnerable to administrative and legal suppression.

Despite these obstacles, history demonstrates that student activism adapts and survives. When direct forms of protest have been suppressed, activists turn to innovative, symbolic ways to continue resisting oppressive systems even when traditional avenues are restricted.

The 2012 Maple Spring was a series of student protests against the proposal to raise university tuition significantly. Throughout this mobilization, protesters faced restrictive legislation, including an emergency law forbidding protests near university grounds and requiring police approval for large public protests (Bill 78), while the municipality of Montreal passed a law prohibiting mask-wearing during any organization or demonstration. In response, the movement devised innovative tactics, such as the “casseroles” actions, nightly balcony protests where citizens banged pots and pans in support of the movement. What began as a creative way to work around restrictions soon spread across the province, illustrating how repressive measures can inadvertently spark innovation.

Furthermore, to ensure no single administrative decision can dissolve student mobilization, a more decentralized and diversified organization strategy is necessary. A constellation of faculty and department-level assemblies, along with alliances beyond campus, can build resilience. When student struggles are tied to a broader community and labour issues, they gain both legitimacy and power. In 2012, opposition to Bill 78 quickly escalated from a tuition protest into a province-wide movement, drawing labor unions, teachers, and even the Quebec Bar Association in protesting for civil rights. Similarly, today, multiple faculty associations at McGill are already challenging Bill 89, citing its violations of constitutional rights by forcing workers to “work against their will, under conditions that are not of their choosing,” as noted by McGill Professor of Sociology Barry Eidlin. By aligning with these efforts, students can position their struggles within a broader fight for democratic liberties and workers’ rights.

History has proven that student mobilization consistently plays a fundamental role in contributing to change. From the fight against South Africa’s apartheid, where McGill notably became the first Canadian university to divest from the National Party’s brutal regime, to more recently, to the Board of Governors’ unanimous decision to divest from fossil fuel companies after a decade of student pressure, students have time and time again demonstrated their ability to push institutions toward greater accountability. These precedents, along with current movements, suggest that while the frameworks for protest may change, mobilization at McGill can continue by embracing decentralization, creativity, and solidarity.

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I wrote this in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death: a conservative activist known for his Christian identity and his strong defense of the Second Amendment. He was shot and killed at a university event in Utah as part of his “American Comeback” tour. What quickly followed was a chaotic spectacle of polarization online. Some celebrated his death, others mourned him as a man of God. Still, many insisted that his murder was a karmic inevitability as a result of his advocacy. Though the motive for his murder is presently unclear, what we do know is that his death immediately became a battleground for political labelling.

This is one of the many issues I have with political labelling. It pulls us into the binary logics of the colonial gaze: left or right, good or evil, martyr or monster. It causes us to overlook complexity and disables our ability to focus on our reality, the harm Kirk’s politics mobilized and the simultaneous grief that comes with any death. After reading the reactions to his death, I had sat with this question: if we celebrate the killing of someone we despise, are we also mirroring the very violence we condemn elsewhere? That’s not to invalidate the very harms his actions have taken against my own communities. What happens when those who honour his death neglect to also hold him accountable? What happens to those left with the damage of his legacy? In this binary logic, there is little space for the full spectrum of grief.

Political labels by design seek to simplify and contain our humanity into tidy boxes easily
controlled and regulated. But simplification also produces the erasure of lived realities and lived suffering. One of my Elders reminded me recently of the interdependence between all living beings (yes, not just humans) and the choices that ripple out beyond the temporary labels that we carry. The colonial gaze we’ve all been conditioned by imposes categories of race, gender, identity, and nation by flattening complexity and forcing people into boxes to serve systems, not life.

Therein lies the tension I feel with theory because it alone cannot be our saviour from this predicament. As Black feminist and poet Audre Lorde said, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” If we continue to debate within the confines of identity labels placed upon us – left versus right, liberal versus conservative – we continuously reinforce the systems of categorization in place. The real harms that continue today in prisons, of colonial violence, of alarming housing and food injustices, of inaccessible healthcare, persist unrefuted.

Meanwhile, on the internet, people are fighting over who gets to claim a moral victory over Kirk’s death. But the internet is not the real world. It is one technological aspect of it built in binary code and transformed into a “culture” that profits off of division and rage, while the real world goes on. The orange hue of the sun continues to shine, the trees continue to release oxygen, and communities continue to fight despite ongoing injustices. It’s easy to get lost in the internet delusion and use up all our energy in online reactions, to the effect that we don’t have capacity any longer for the real work of change.

But real mobilization is happening. Here in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal), the tenants’ union SLAM-MATU valiantly fought and won against a 19.8% rental hike as a result of collective organizing. In British Columbia, the Supreme Court recognized the Haida Nation as having complete sovereignty over the terrestrial areas of Haida Gwaii. These actions are not about labels, but are about innate human needs for food, housing, support, and collective care. They are about living in respectful and reciprocal relationships with one another.

So, what do we want to build? An internet world where labels rule and transactions thrive, or a living world where relationships are essential and transformational? What are we able to learn when we stop obsessing over who is right or wrong online, and instead ask what the people around us need? What movements can we organize, here and now, where we are?

Charlie Kirk’s death shows us what happens when labels consume us. In this space, nuance disappears, violence becomes a spectacle, and we lose sight of what liberation demands. True liberation does not grow from ideological purity or choosing the right side of the internet war. It comes from rebuilding our relationships, restoring the deficit of trust between strangers, and cultivating communities of care. Start small. Start local. Start with who is in your life. It’s the micro shifts that make the macro change possible.

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Terms such as ‘prude’ or ‘pious’ are now thrown around for those less interested in sex; those who embrace multiple partners face accusations of being a ‘fuckboy’ or ‘fuckgirl’; the ones who leap from relationship to relationship are labeled a ‘serial monogamist.’ Every set of sexual judgment collides across boundaries as our former stigmas lose their grip, encountering students from 152 different countries who each arrive carrying their own.

More strikingly, gendered archetypes arise. Chief among them is hybrid masculinity, defined by sociologists Tristan Bridges and C.J Pascoe as the incorporation of marginalized identities or progressive characteristics, such as queerness, feminism, or sensitivity, into performances of masculinity, while retaining social privilege and dominance. These gendered dynamics often mask compulsory heterosexuality behind the façade of wokism and feminism. It is mostly cosmetic: the ‘performative male’ fantasy doesn’t dismantle patriarchy’s grip on sexuality. 

Compulsory sexuality – the social expectation that everyone should be sexually active, interested in sex, or pursuing relationships– is further reinforced by the social, loud, party-centered environment of residence life. Sex is always just around the corner, talked about, overheard through thin walls, and constantly fantasized. With little else to do outside of classes, students fill their time by socializing before, between, and after lectures, and partying through the weekends. Our bodies suddenly become the center of social life. In residences, bowls of condoms appear during Frosh or Halloween, insinuating that sex will happen. The result is an edgy cocktail of hormones, peer pressure, substances, and newfound freedom, pushing boundaries, and lowering inhibitions.

College sexuality today is less about why you want to have sex and more about how you want it, on top of conditions that keep getting worse. COVID-19 introduced fears of proximity itself, producing tighter social boundaries and reducing sexual encounters. In the background, national politics – such as US abortion restrictions – loom heavily over American students, reminding them that sexual freedom is never guaranteed and always conditional.

And yet, paradoxically, while campus life is saturated with sexual talk and expectations, researchers and journalists have been warning of a ‘sex recession’. To explain it, some point to the rise of modern hookup culture. Bargained over on dating apps such as Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble, sex increasingly functions as a kind of online currency, reducing intimacy to a quick, one-off encounter that many find unappealing. Others accuse the impact of the #MeToo movement, which has exposed how deeply patriarchal structures shape sexual encounters, often leaving women feeling dispossessed of their own sexuality– here, what is framed as “sex” may in fact be experienced as a form of dispossession, closer to violation than to intimacy. At the same time, safety concerns have led to a redefinition of what “safe sex” means, not just protection from disease or pregnancy, but the pursuit of sexual experiences that are emotionally secure and consensual.

Beyond this, broader cultural anxieties weigh heavily: climate change, the rise of authoritarian politics, and mental health struggles all contribute to stress and disengagement from partnered sex. Instead, many young people turn inward, exploring sexuality alone through pornography or other sexual media. Indeed, sex has never felt more politicized, more fraught, and more carefully negotiated.

Ultimately, college sex teaches us that sexuality is not merely what happens to the body, but an experience of the self in the midst of the world.

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The transfer of around 60 per cent of McGill’s physical collection to an automated 4,200 square metre off-site facility was carried out alongside the ambitious Fiat Lux Project, which aimed to “create a new central Library complex dramatically reconfigured to suit modern users.” Announced in 2019 as part of the bicentennial ‘Master Plan’ to wholly revitalize McGill’s campuses, Fiat Lux promised to “more than double available seating” in a newly incorporated McLennan-Redpath Library.

But Fiat Lux — Latin for ‘let there be light’ — was prematurely snuffed out when McGill President and Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini announced, in a September 2024 Senate meeting, that the administration had reached the “painful decision” to suspend the $33 million project. Saini attributed recent project cuts, including the termination of Fiat Lux, to the Quebec government’s decision to significantly increase tuition for out-of-province students. This decision has decreased overall enrollment revenue and helped balloon the university’s deficit, from a projected $15 million in the 2025 fiscal year to a staggering projected $45 million in the 2026 fiscal year. In early February of this year, McGill released a statement tersely reflecting on the Quebec government’s actions: “It has taken more than two centuries to build this world-renowned university, but just over a year for these decisions to harm it deeply.”

During the aforementioned Senate meeting, McGill Librarian and Senator David Greene inquired whether or not the Fiat Lux project was “suspended permanently, or if there was an intention to resume it in the future.” The question was met by a resounding shrug, with Senator Fabrice Labeau responding that “the University would continue exploring options for how to best utilize available space to meet the evolving needs of students and other library users, though there was no timeline for these efforts.” With plans on hold indefinitely, when will the 400,000 books planned for return to a renovated McLennan-Redpath complex be sent back? It doesn’t take a keen eye to see that there aren’t 4,000 books in McLennan, let alone 400,000.

What we’re left with are the remnants of an unfinished vision. Walking slowly down corridors of empty white bookcases as the tube lights above me eerily flicker to life, a sense of loss pervades my thoughts. Not only because the fluorescent blinking reminds me of a haunted house, but because technology continues to push the physical medium towards obsolescence. I’ve been asking myself: “What is a library without books?” It’s a community centre or study hall, but no longer a library. Those naked shelves stand as monuments to a dying age. The physical book had a good run of over 4,000 years anyway, right?

But with threats to internet access, the physical book may be more essential now than ever before. I recently finished reading the book Apple in China by Patrick McGee, chronicling the fascinating and alarming story of how China allowed for the rise of Apple and, perhaps more importantly, how Apple played a pivotal role in the rise of China as the world’s manufacturer. While reading the book, I learned about the erection of China’s so-called ‘Great Firewall,’ which limits and surveils their citizen’s internet access, and Apple’s surrender to the whims of that same authoritarian police state: “…when Beijing called for virtual private networks to be removed from the China App Store, Apple complied, and 674 VPN apps were deleted. This was a massive concession, placing all iPhone users in the country in a splintered-off version of the internet” (298). The playbook is clear: limiting information limits resistance. The internet is not as secure as some believe it to be, even from the institutions we trust with our personal data.

You may say this repression of free speech can’t happen here, but take it from an American abroad: it could. The rise of an anti-informational age at home following the re-election of President Donald Trump, along with increasing book-bans across the country, means that free and easy access to university libraries and their physical contents should be enthusiastically protected. I agree that ample space must be made in our libraries for students, but when does principle overtake practicality? In a world on a collision course with AI, reliable information is soon to become an even more valuable commodity than it already is. Though Fiat Lux was not unreasonable for its promise of increased space, the removal of nearly 2.5 million books from the immediate access of McGill students is a distressing overreach that is only underscored by the project’s failure to proceed.

I came to McGill in 2023, and was one of the last to see the Library before its hollowing. I remember my neck hurting from walking up and down the aisles, stunned at the sheer size of McGill’s collection and proud to be a student here. In the free time that a freshman had, which was plenty, I would sit down and flip through whatever interested me. I miss that.

Though a sleek remodeling is worthwhile in theory, the Fiat Lux approach to separating libraries from their books removes from libraries their very souls. Books are as much a symbol of the appreciation of knowledge as they are an instrument to enhance understanding. A library without its books is a car without wheels: you can sit down, but it won’t take you far.

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The so-called “McGillian complex” isn’t new. Ask anyone who has spent time at McGill, and they’ll likely tell you about the way students compare themselves — sometimes jokingly, sometimes seriously — to those at the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia (UBC), and even our anglophone neighbours at Concordia. A new ranking only gives that culture further validation. A student, who chose to remain anonymous, said, “We already thought we were number one. Now it’s official.”

Rivalries between universities are nothing unusual. Harvard and Yale, Oxford and Cambridge; students have always measured their schools against others. But at McGill, that competitiveness sometimes slips into something sharper. Comments like, “At least we didn’t end up at Concordia” or, “UBC is basically just McGill with better weather” aren’t hard to overhear in downtown Montreal cafés.

Platforms like Spotted: McGill show just how baked-in rivalry is to student culture. The page is essentially an anonymous confessions account on Instagram, with over 21,000 followers and more than 1,200 posts that capture the tone of campus life. Anonymous posts like, “Concordians infiltrating the confessions form yet again…” spark comments that are funny, casual, and full of that playful tension that makes the “McGillian complex” so visible in social media banter.

It isn’t only students who keep this rivalry alive. The university itself profits from it. Walk into the McGill Campus Store and you’ll find items that play up the hierarchy between schools like the McGill Pride Shot Glass, which ranks universities as if they were measurement lines, with Concordia at the bottom and McGill proudly at the top. By selling merchandise that turns competition into a joke, the administration reinforces the very culture of superiority that students are accused of carrying.

The new ranking risks amplifying these attitudes. While some students see the banter as harmless, others point out that these jokes feed into an elitist culture. Concordia, for example, has a long history of excellence in creative fields, arts, and community-based programs — opportunities that McGill doesn’t necessarily have, such as a dedicated Visual Arts program. Reducing the success of a university to a punchline overlooks the complexity of the different factors that make universities thrive.

The real question is how should McGill students respond to this recognition. Pride doesn’t have to equal arrogance. Being proud of our institution’s reputation can coexist with respect for other schools. Yet too often, the McGill identity has leaned on dismissing others rather than building its own community culture.

One student, who wishes to remain anonymous, put it simply: “It’s nice to be at the top, but it feels like nothing on campus will change. We still struggle with the same issues as before.” Another noted that the ranking made them more conscious of how McGill is perceived outside Quebec: “It’s good for the brand, but it shouldn’t make us forget the cracks in the foundation.”

At the same time, it’s worth asking what exactly this number one title really means. Rankings like QS are based on metrics such as academic reputation, faculty-to-student ratios, and international outlook. They make for glossy headlines, but they don’t magically fix the problems students within universities face every day. Tuition isn’t going down — it’s actually more than doubled in Canada since 2006. The shortage of advising appointments isn’t shrinking. The never-ending line at Redpath Café certainly isn’t disappearing.

What the ranking does change is perception, both externally and internally. Internationally, McGill now has another stamp of credibility to attract students and funding. On campus, it shapes how students talk about themselves, their degrees, and their job prospects. But perception alone doesn’t improve the lived experience of being here. That tension, between reputation and reality, is part of what fuels the “McGillian complex.”

So, what should McGill pride actually look like? Being ranked number one doesn’t guarantee that we’ll act like the number one community. It doesn’t erase elitism in student culture or solve inequities in access to education. What it does offer is a chance to ask ourselves: are we living up to the title, or are we just polishing the ego of the “McGillian complex”?

If McGill students are serious about embracing this recognition, it might be worth stepping back from the rivalry game. Instead of measuring our success against the University of Toronto or UBC, we could focus on what actually makes this place worth being proud of. Is it the ranking, the diversity of students, the city we live in, or the communities we build on campus?

McGill’s new title is an opportunity not just to brag, but to rethink how we define excellence and honour. The ranking will eventually fade into next year’s cycle, but the culture we create around it is ours to decide. The “McGillian complex” doesn’t have to mean arrogance. It could mean something else entirely: a culture of confidence without condescension, and of pride without the put-downs. Maybe that’s the kind of number one reputation worth holding onto.

The post The “McGillian Complex”: Pride or a Problem? appeared first on The McGill Daily.

 It seems as if , Spotted got its name from quite literally “spotting” odd occurrences on campus. For example, one student submitted a photo of a mouse trap in the New Rez dining hall. The account occasionally branches out from posting confessions to also include advice for incoming students and host events. In March, Spotted even hosted their own fat squirrel competition. While not all submissions are included in Spotted’s daily posts, the account gives many students a platform where they can share the bizarre or funny confessions they have on their chest. One student shared that they “can’t stop eating wafers and I think I need help”, asking fellow students for advice. The anonymity of these posts makes you feel as though anyone around you could’ve been the person responsible for holding on to such hilarious secrets. 

The candid nature of the posts is fueled by the absence of consequences – with students aware that their thoughts, opinions, and stories cannot be traced back to them. Sure, a student can share on Spotted that the person they were eyeing on the 3rd floor of the Redpath was cute. But would they go up to them and say so? Absolutely not. 

Confessing such private thoughts can feel easier when not faced with the downside of people you know remembering them. I mean, do you really want to be reminded years later of a brief dining hall crush you had during your first semester? Due to the volume of posts from the account, specific stories seldom stay on anyone’s mind the minute a new one is available. Their viewers are hungry for gossip, not pausing to think about last week’s news.

My introduction to Spotted McGill took place around Halloween of my first year. Looking for something to do that weekend, I stumbled across Spotted which, at the time, was promoting a power hour to celebrate the occasion. It was then that I did some further scrolling to discover a plethora of juicy confessions. Over time, hearing my friends say things like “can’t wait to see Spotted’s next post” or “there’s no way you haven’t seen this” became standard practice at dining hall tables. It became routine to crowd around someone’s phone and read over the latest post. It didn’t take long after discovering Spotted that I started to jokingly refer to the page as my daily paper. But in all honesty, Spotted had become exactly that – soon infiltrating the fresh routine I had built for myself as a first year student.

New to the city, coming from a suburban town in Ontario, I had become used to hiding within a crowd whenever on campus. It’s easy to lose yourself in the buzz of “rush hour” foot traffic on Sherbrooke and feel reduced to yet another number at McGill. Being able to learn about traditions McGill students participate in, such as the ginger run on St Patrick’s Day, or different spots around the city made me feel like less of an outsider.

This disconnect is stronger for students who leave for home during the summer. I’m currently writing this article nestled between busy commuters on the GO train, gazing up at the CN Tower. Anticipating my next hot dog on the lower field, I can’t help but feel detached from the community I had felt so embedded in mere months ago. It is then that I long to keep myself updated through Spotted’s posts.

Not only does Spotted McGill make students feel connected to their peers, it helps us feel less shame about our own experiences while providing comedic relief. Spotted acts as the court jester sitting in our pockets. With the filtered, brand-deal friendly stories we see daily on social media, it is refreshing to have someone we can either sympathize with or laugh at. The choice is really up to you. Reading people’s shameful confessions serves as a comforting reminder that we’re not the only ones experiencing embarrassing moments.

Following this account makes us feel part of an exclusive club, as first years crammed inside the hallway outside Leacock 132 looking at a sea of unfamiliar faces. Reading these posts gives us common ground to connect on. Whether it’s to marvel over someone’s worst hookup story or to see the latest fat squirrel update, being the person who gets to tell everyone else that they saw today’s Spotted post before them makes you feel connected to McGill’s own gossip girl. 

By concealing the identity of the confessors on this page, we actually get to know each other on a much more personal level. The lack of identification in this space allows for students to be more vulnerable, allowing us to hear more candidly about each others lives. Maybe anonymity is the way to go when building a stronger community after all.

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Humour has long been studied through three main theories. Hobbes and Plato’s understanding of humour, now coined as The Superiority Theory, sees laughter as arising from one feeling above others’ mistakes or misfortunes. The Relief Theory, first explored by Lord Shaftesbury then refined by renowned father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, views humour as a safe outlet for tension and repressed emotions, while Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer’s Incongruity Theory suggests we laugh at surprising mismatches between expectation and reality. Together, these theories show how humour can entertain while also masking deeper issues; it can deflect discomfort, obscure empathy, or distract from serious realities. 

These philosophical frameworks set the stage for modern psychological studies, which investigate how specific types of humour actually affect our mental health. Building on decades of work linking humour and well-being, a 2023 study of nearly 700 Italian participants demonstrates that different comic styles have distinct psychological effects on individuals: benign humour — aimed at amusing others for pure entertainment — was associated with lower depression, anxiety, and stress, while irony and sarcasm predicted higher distress as they tend to carry much more emotional weight. 

These findings highlight that humour is far from one-dimensional, blending cognitive, emotional, and social functions. A witty remark might help someone reframe a stressful event, while a sarcastic jab may only deepen a sense of alienation in the relationship between the joker and the receiver, and in both their relationships to self. Seen this way, humour is not just relief, it’s a mirror of how we process challenges. Do we choose to connect and reframe, or to deflect and attack?

Humor as a physiological regulator does provide measurable benefits: laughing lowers cortisol levels and elevates dopamine, fostering a sense of relief. But just as painkillers dull symptoms without treating causes, humour can numb us to emotional wounds without helping them heal.

The psychology of humour becomes especially interesting when mapped onto culture. Consider the rise of self-deprecating humour online — tweets about being “permanently exhausted,” TikToks about depression disguised as punchlines. These jokes resonate because they capture shared experiences of struggle, offering a sense of connection and making individuals feel less alone. Yet, while this recognition can be comforting, it also risks normalizing avoidance. If we constantly joke about mental health, burnout, or loneliness, we acknowledge the problem without ever addressing it. Over time, this avoidance can deepen feelings of despair, strain relationships, and reinforce a sense of nihilism, leaving us laughing at our struggles instead of working through them. 

Comedians have long understood this tension. Richard Pryor, Hannah Gadsby, and Bo Burnham, among others, have mined their personal pain for material. Their work illustrates both sides of humour’s power: it can spark catharsis by bringing hidden struggles into the open, or it can shield performers and audiences alike from sitting with discomfort. Burnham’s 2021 special Inside encapsulates this comedic exploration of isolation that blurs the line between coping and confession; leaving viewers to wonder whether they should laugh, cry, or both. Personally, I lean towards seeing humour as useful in helping people get through tough situations, but I’m less convinced that self-deprecating comedy on its own is especially productive. At times, it risks turning pain into a kind of competition — an “oppression olympics” played out in joke form — rather than prompting us to think about how these struggles might actually be addressed. 

This is not just an individual problem but a social one. In conversation, humour can deflect vulnerability: a friend makes a joke when asked how they’re really doing, or colleagues laugh off chronic overwork instead of discussing burnout. On a larger scale, political satire often relieves tension while inadvertently discouraging action – if the joke is sharp enough, the outrage feels already expressed. The risk is clear: if we turn everything into a joke, nothing feels serious enough to merit change. Humour keeps us comfortable, but comfort is not the same as resolution.

Satire adds another layer — and not always a harmless one. In a remarkable role reversal that would have bewildered previous generations, comedians now often deliver political commentary that reaches wider audiences than traditional news outlets. Think of John Oliver or Hasan Minhaj: jesters who double as journalists. While their humour can make complex issues more digestible, it also risks trivializing serious matters. For instance, during a segment on robocalls, Oliver compared Senator Susan Collins to spoofing technology — claiming she masks her true political leanings leading to misrepresented opinions of her — but the audience responded not with reflection, but with boos. Reducing nuanced policy debates to punchlines may leave audiences laughing (or, in this case, jeering) without fully grappling with the stakes. Thus, fostering cynicism rather than informed engagement. When laughter replaces critical reflection, political jokes can numb concern, normalizing inaction and discouraging meaningful discourse.

None of this means we should stop making jokes. Humour is a vital human resource, one that connects us and helps us endure. Perhaps the challenge is balance; laughter can make heavy truths lighter, but it should not replace truth altogether. As cultural critic Susan Sontag once noted, “silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech.” The same might be said for laughter: every joke says something, but sometimes what it says is, “I don’t want to talk about it.” In an era where humour saturates our media and conversations, maybe the bravest move is knowing when to take off the mask. To laugh, yes, but also to pause, to sit and see beyond the laughter, and meet the realities we tend to avoid.

The post Behind the Punchline appeared first on The McGill Daily.

On a chilly Saturday evening, all cozied up with a hot bowl of homemade chilli, I finally watched John M. Chu’s Wicked (2024), four months after its theatre release. Don’t judge me.

I was already somewhat familiar with the original Broadway play that opened in 2003 with Idina Menzel and Kristin Chynoweth, starring respectively as the Wicked Witch of West, Elphaba, and the Good Witch of the East, Galinda (Glinda). I also just discovered it was based upon Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, a novel published in 1995 and written by Gregory Maguire.

However, I was unprepared for the rollercoaster of emotions that the movie put me through. It’s always interesting to see how one experiences the same work of art at different stages of their lives.

When I was first introduced to Wicked, the musical, my first impression of it was very superficial. The political undertone of the story was completely lost on me, although I always understood that Elphaba was ostracized because she was “different” and Glinda was loved because she was always “just right.” 

This time around, I saw Wicked for all its realistic and dark glory, and came to the conclusion that Elphaba isn’t just a green witch. Elphaba is an icon and inspiration for all women of colour.

Elphaba’s journey throughout the movie is nothing surprising to the women of colour who do not conform to the delicate, petite and pixie-like beauty standards revered by society. Her looks, however, are not the only thing that people run away from. It is her unapologetically loud and deviant attitude, in addition to her powerful nature.

Having grown up shunned and hated by her father all of her life, Elphaba is no stranger to society casting her out. However, she doesn’t act meek. Quite the opposite — she is quippy and sarcastic, beating everyone to the punch.

Upon everyone’s first impressions of her, Elphaba simply answers with, “Fine, might as well get this over with, no I’m not sea sick, yes I’ve always been green, no I didn’t eat grass as a child.”

Her green skin represents an allegory for anything in one’s appearance considered “different” or “out of the ordinary” (whatever that means!): a slightly bigger nose than average, a darker complexion, freckled skin, textured unruly hair … the list goes on. In modern world terms, ya ain’t white.

People only seem to start noticing Elphaba more positively when Glinda gives her a makeover so she can be “popular” among her fellow students. Elphaba starts wearing her hair down in a half-updo, just like her blonde counterpart, even going as far as emulating Glinda’s signature hair flip to seem quirky and cute.

But what really struck me wasn’t the physical makeover, nor was it the change in the students’ attitudes once Elphaba and Glinda started becoming close.

It was Madame Morrible’s treatment of Elphaba.

Madame Morrible — powerful sorceress, headmistress of Crage Hall at Shiz University and cohort of The Wizard of Oz — in all her grey haired glory, takes Elphaba under her wing for the entirety of the film, after first witnessing the latter’s powers at Shiz’s great hall.

As the story goes, we are made to believe that Madame Morrible is just honing Elphaba’s craft so she can become a better sorceress. But upon closer inspection, Madame Morrible doesn’t teach her anything. She just taunts her student, trying to gauge how her powers work and what can activate them, like when she reminds Elphaba of the hateful message left on Dr. Dillamond’s board to see if the anger will get her to cast a spell.

This all comes to a head in the final moments of the movie, when Elphaba and Glinda go to the Emerald City to see the wizard. Elphaba reads a spell in the Grimmerie, giving wings to the monkeys against her will. Once she realizes she’d been used, she rebels and runs away, leading Madame Morrible to vilify her in front of all of Oz, painting her as a wicked witch.

The moment becomes a brilliant depiction of what happens when you defy the system, when  your talent does not serve them anymore. Madame Morrible used Elphaba’s powers for her own agenda, but once she realizes Elphaba could not be subdued, she decides to shift her focus to what she could control: the reputation around the Green Girl.

And it got me thinking just how many women of colour throughout the years have been  villainized and criticized. Because they refuse to conform to the system that was oppressing them, denying against  their own erasure. It got me thinking how many times those same women are still villainized in everyday life, but become praised when shown on the big screen, mimicking the irony of it all.

So this is for all the Elphabas out there as this Women’s History Month comes to a close. Keep on defying gravity –  even if you’re flying solo, at least you’re flying free.

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Fueled by dopamine and celebrity glitz, young college men are among the prime targets for these marketing machines. Beneath the game’s thrill lies a user interface (UI) built to maximize profits, obscure odds, and encourage risk. I focus on DraftKings, though similar tactics and designs apply across different sports betting platforms.

The DraftKings platform is not just for entertainment purposes. The use of relentless, misleading notifications and promotions for high-risk parlays and samegame-parlays (SGPs) nudges users toward riskier choices that drive bookmakers’ profit margins while downplaying the true cost of betting. Parlays and SGPs, both types of multibets, have a much more complex calculation for their true price, as it compounds based on various single bets, referred to as legs. This may lead to an inequitable experience, especially for those between the ages of 18 to 22, as well as economically vulnerable households, as they are encouraged to partake in these risky, addictive behaviors and constantly lured into the broader world of gambling. The result? DraftKings creates an uneven playing field where casual bettors are at a disadvantage and addiction is embedded within the UI.

Understanding sports betting’s behavioral impact requires a social lens. Recently, wagering has become a “sports ritual,” much like having a beer during a game, normalizing the behavior. A successful bet can serve as cultural capital within social groups, reinforcing male identity. This social framing, especially among young men, shapes perceptions of betting and creates pressure to participate.

I invite you to take a step inside the DraftKings app. Immediately, Shaquille O’Neal pops up in the center of your screen with a big smile and bright green colors that contrast against the dark background — “Shaq’s Boost of the Week: Player Rebounds Parlay Boost!” You keep scrolling on these colorful deals, seeing more parlay and SGP boost deals. At the end of the deals is a widget that reads “It’s more fun when it’s for fun,” a meek reminder to bet responsibly. And at the bottom right, a pop-up widget that redirects you to play blackjack on the app lurks on your screen as you visit any page.At first glance, the app appears to seamlessly blend entertainment, special deals, and celebrity endorsements. However, once you leave it, the bombardment of notifications leaves no space for breathing as DraftKings urges you to participate in a “special deal.” Multibets are designed to enhance prices for bookmakers while the true price paid for the deal is much larger than what it might seem at first glance. There is no option to specify which type of notifications you would like to receive, and there is no apparent way of knowing the true price of a multibet deal, which may especially put inexperienced young bettors at risk of reducing welfare. Moreover, the constant prompting to play a casino game may serve as a way of getting casual bettors to spend more time and money on DraftKings by developing a more serious gambling vice. After all, DraftKings openly admitted to hoping to create “higher customer lifetime value” after acquiring a leading lottery app in the US.

Just as some people may be more prone to developing addictions, the particular “structural characteristics” of objects can contribute to speeding up or starting an addiction. Time-sensitive “special” offers and hidden costs in DraftKings’ notifications, combined with ads promoting a betting culture, reinforce the normalization of sports gambling. These design choices create a social fabric where betting feels routine. This normalization works side-by-side with the design of notifications and promotional multibet deals on DraftKings by reinforcing the notion that gambling is exciting while ignoring the consequences of gambling.

Given DraftKings’ profit driven model, removing multibets and casino features is unlikely. However, the platform has a moral obligation to design a UI that protects young users from addiction. Generic warnings are not enough, nor are they effective. DraftKings should implement transparent pricing for multibets by displaying a clear breakdown of the total price calculation for a multibet, along with a clear breakdown of the odds of each leg, to reduce the risk of the development of vicious betting habits among young men. Additionally, it is important that DraftKings creates more detailed mobile notification settings upon download, allowing for displays of bet losses, which currently do not exist. Also, there should be a notification option to show money and time spent betting if it is classified as “risky” in accordance with public health guidelines.

Although the causes of addiction are extensive, and warnings about true odds may be more useful as preventative measures, the solution must extend beyond UI alone. Design choices can help prevent vulnerable young populations from developing a “casual bet” dynamic into a long-term addiction. For these design changes to be enforced, policies must be pushed to ensure sports betting apps have less predatory designs.

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Sea Cliff is the epitome of small-town living. A unique enclave amidst the landscape of Levittowns and highways on Long Island, it was originally founded as a German Methodist summer campground. Marketed as a brisk getaway from the hustle and bustle of turn-of-the century New York City, it was a literal shining city on a hill overlooking the Long Island Sound. I can’t stress enough how that era has shaped my hometown. Upkeep of Victorian-era buildings, maintaining a family-friendly reputation, rallying against housing developments, and stern independence from other municipalities. It’s the Jeffersonian dream: a self sufficient, proud, independent village that prides itself on said independence. Life is all about “Keeping Sea Cliff Weird.”

Yet, Sea Cliff’s admirable tenacity runs only skin-deep. The village only gets more expensive the more yuppie, Brooklynite families move in. Its roads are more packed as its nineteenth-century planning stretches to accommodate Long Island’s car culture. It becomes ever less diverse and less weird. Economic disparity joins the list alongside a long-standing lack of racial diversity. It’s an impasse between old and new. It can be seen in the transition of businesses in the last five years: the old hardware store turned into a beauty parlour, three new slick coffee shops in place of a single café, and the increasing presence of RXR real estate “luxury” developments surrounding the village. Sea Cliff’s position is similar to many across the country, finding itself perpetually shifting amidst the political shocks of an insecure nation. What’s passed down from this national political zeitgeist that champions vigilantes and the destruction of bureaucracy — a philosophy that fueled the January 6 riots — is the encouragement to localized action. If local politics reflects that of the nation, Sea Cliff is no different in its struggle for equilibrium. If there’s one flaw in the ideology of the small town, it is its resistance to change, and no better example could be found than that of local business owner Robert Ehrlich and his recent coup d’état.

On the morning of Monday, March 10, Ehrlich and three colleagues walked into Village Hall and pronounced themselves the new governing body of Sea Cliff, declaring that every current village employee was fired. These proclamations arrive nearly a week before the Village’s mayoral elections, which Ehrlich has already proclaimed “fully rigged and meaningless.” After an hourlong standoff with municipal staff and a half dozen police officers, Ehrlich and company were escorted out of village hall by county police.

As a follow-up to an official village statement, Ehrlich replied in a now-deleted Facebook post, “We have a new entity,” declaring an end to “this racist antisemitic group that wishes to control every aspect of our lives and our businesses. With zero experience and success in their lives except to maintain phony made up power. (sic)” In an interview with the Long Island Herald, Ehrlich stated he had accrued 1,800 signatures to dissolve the Village government (supposedly in accordance with the NYS Citizens Empowerment Act) and had been invited to the White House. Additionally, Ehrlich stated, “I’m interpreting the law any way I want, the way Trump would interpret laws as he sees fit… It’s called trickledown politics, which is what we’re doing.”

Robert Ehrlich may be Sea Cliff’s embodiment of Trump. A “rags-to-riches” story of his establishment of Pirate Brands (of Pirate’s Booty fame), based in Sea Cliff, made him an amiable example of smalltown success. However, after the expansion of Pirate Brands, Ehrlich sued his co-founder, Mike Repole, for 195 million USD, claiming that Repole attacked his “self-confidence and entrepreneurial spirit,” despite making an estimated 70 million USD from Pirate Brands alongside him.

It was just “Rob being Rob,” Repole said. “You would think that someone who made over 70 million USD would be very happy.”

Since 2015, while his village properties remained dormant and his business thriving, Ehrlich became increasingly active in politics, protesting the Village’s alleged lack of transparency and corruption. Recently, however, he was only able to cite inadequate outdoor seating and “limits on creativity” as the standing government’s current flaws. As noted by colleagues like Repole, Ehrlich may have a troubled relationship with facts; in a deleted post by Ehrlich, the businessman claimed he had met with New York Governor Kathy Hochul and had been given the “go-ahead” for his coup d’état plan. According to the Governor’s office, this meeting never happened. Ehrlich, without large sums of money and international recognition, might otherwise be labelled a small-town eccentric.

In pursuit of protecting a Village (or a country) from change, the reaction of the privileged is despotic. In the vein of those like Ehrlich and Trump, their ends justify their means — if they perceive something as “wrong,” “they don’t go and ask for permission, they just do it.” In small towns like Sea Cliff, across the US, individuals are emboldened to actively defy the rule of law for their own benefit. It’s an ideology that emboldens behaviour like that of March 10 or January 6, all resulting from the trickle-down of Donald Trump and entitled personalities like Ehrlich.

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In 1969, at the ironically named Second Congress to Unite Women, co-founder and then president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) Betty Friedan campaigned for women to enter “into the mainstream of American society, now [in] fully equal partnership with men.”

With this goal in mind, and a position at the top of America’s largest women’s advocacy group at the time, she became the “mother of second-wave feminism.”

“Homosexuality is not, in my opinion, what the women’s movement is all about.”

Friedan was given free license by the public to speak on behalf of all women’s interests, and with that power, she made amazing progress in terms of asserting women’s rights across America.

All except queer women, that is.

“They are a lavender menace to women’s rights.”

With the word “lavender,” Friedan was referring to a slang term for “gay,” which first originated in the 1930s. Queer people at the time would wear light purple lapels to signal their sexuality to other homosexuals. Over the years, this covert method became public and lost its safety as a sign of silent solidarity. It became either a term for closeted (as in a “‘lavender marriage”’) or, in some cases, a reclaimed colour of pride.

Friedan was also alluding to the “red menace” phenomenon during the Cold War, wherein Americans were increasingly suspicious that their neighbours were secretly undercover communists. Friedan clarified this connection, stating that if lesbians were publicly mentioned in NOW’s directive, feminists as a whole would be seen as “a bunch of bra-burning man-haters.”

Despite what Friedan wanted the public to believe, NOW had a very close and beneficial relationship with the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), a San Francisco based lesbian activism group named after Sappho’s courtesan on the Isle of Lesbos.

The DOB started as a social club. Gay bars were often raided by police, so the DOB organized meetings at confidential locations. Two of its founders, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, said the club started as a safe space to slow dance, as doing so with the same sex in public was illegal. A member would be assigned to door duty, greeting each new participant with the phrase “I’m [name]. Who are you? You don’t have to give me your real name, not even your real first name.”

Though the group was formed to avoid police, it nonetheless attracted the attention of the FBI. Undercover agents were sent to meetings to report back on the group’s activities. Eventually, they concluded that the goal of the DOB was “to educate the public to accept the Lesbian homosexual into society.” Russel Wolden, former City Assessor until his arrest for conspiracy and bribery in 1967, criticized San Francisco’s government by describing the city as a “haven for homosexuals.” In a City Hall Hearing, he warned the public of the “danger” of the DOB:

“You parents of daughters — do not sit back complacently feeling that because you have no boys in your family everything is all right … Make yourself acquainted with the name Daughters of Bilitis.”

We know that NOW was well-acquainted with the DOB, having been sponsored by the group for years. Despite this, they refused to put the DOB’s name on their list of donors, in order to further distance the feminist movement from that of gay rights.

Regardless of how hypocritically Friedan denied lesbian participation in feminism, her sentiment was echoed by the movement as a whole. The message was simple: lesbian issues aren’t women’s issues because lesbians aren’t proper women. Or, as Friedan put it: “We want feminine feminists.”

The effect of this statement was immediate, and NOW began its goal of removing lesbians from feminism, beginning in their own organization. Newsletter editor Rita Mae Brown was fired for being a lesbian, along with all other openly queer women employed by NOW.

In response, Brown created a new group for women who had been excluded by mainstream feminism due to their sexuality, which she called “Lavender Menace.”

The original members, seventeen in total, were made up of previous NOW advocates and women from the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). Both groups had similar complaints about lesbian issues being sidelined in their organization and yearned for an advocacy group where their demands wouldn’t play second fiddle to either straight women or gay men.

Brown created Lavender Menace with that exact goal in mind, finally offering queer women a space where they wouldn’t have to shout in order to be seen. Their first directive was to remind NOW of the power they’d lost in excluding lesbians from the women’s movement.

So, about five months later in May 1970, they hijacked the Second Congress to Unite Women. Friedan had just taken the stage to introduce the event when several crowd members stood up abruptly. They tore off the shirts to the audience’s shock, only to reveal a second shirt underneath which read Lavender Menace.

A Lavender Menace member took Friedan’s momentary shock as a chance to take the microphone and introduce the group to all the feminists gathered, explaining that their goal was to educate the crowd, not talk over them. She simply announced that outside the building, Lavender Menace was setting up workshops about queerness for any women interested.

They also passed around a manifesto titled The Woman Identified Woman, which contained a resolution to the Second Congress asking feminists to recognize, then and forever, that the movement must:

1. “Be resolved that women’s liberation is a lesbian plot.

2. Resolved that whenever the label ‘lesbian’ is used against the movement collectively or against women individually, it is to be affirmed, not denied.

3. In all discussions of birth control, homosexuality must be included as a legitimate method of contraception.

4. All sex education curricula must include lesbianism as a valid, legitimate form of sexual expression and love.

Each resolution works to give queer women an equal standing in feminism as their straight counterparts. NOW’s biggest pitfall was assuming that all women benefitted equally from the legislation they put forward, completely ignoring intersections of race, class, and sexuality in their platform. In order for feminism to benefit all women equally, the movement must acknowledge the diverse experiences of womanhood, and advocate accordingly.

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Over the years, my expectations for comprehensive mainstream war coverage in Sub-Saharan Africa dwindled bit by bit. I lost patience hearing reporters reduce complex conflicts to tribal disputes. I grew tired of reading the gross abstractions about “never ending war” that often accompanies reporting on the Global South. Still, as the current M23 conflict in the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has recently begun to receive more coverage from global media outlets, a small part of me expected to see proficient writing on the complexities of the armed conflict.

My hopes were unfounded. The passive reporting of sexual violence in the DRC has instead, left a new sour taste in my mouth; a taste that can specifically be attributed to the lack of structural analysis on root of sexual violence in war, as well as a lack of coverage on the local resistance against this deliberate act of violence. 

A documentary that partly avoided falling into the trap of obscuring wartime sexual violence was the first episode in Gloria Steinem’s “Woman” series, which investigated the instrumental use of rape in Eastern Congo. The episode focused on the Kivu region, a nucleus for conflict, where sexual violence has been weaponised to humiliate its communities and assert dominance. The episode was by no means comprehensive, as it admittedly failed to examine how the legitimation of sexual violence in Congolese society was the basis for its exponential increase during the war. It additionally does not report on UN peacekeepers’ sexual abuse of Congolese women. Despite this, interviews conducted by journalist Isobel Yeoung were still able to give viewers a first-hand account of the distressing toll that sexual violence has taken on Kivu. Yeoung also interviewed activists who worked to address the sexual crimes neglected by the government, covering the community response to the violence. For instance, Yeoung met with the Congolese activist Masika Katsuva, who founded the Association des Personnes Déshéritées Unies pour le Développement (APDUD) in 2002, which has rehabilitated over 10,000 women. The documentary further includes a notable interview with the Nobel peace prize winning Congolese gynecologist Dr Dennis Mukwege, as viewers learn about his role in founding the Panzi Hospital in 1999 aimed to treat victims of rape. 

Almost ten years after the episode was filmed, there is still a clear relationship between a rise in armed conflict and increased sexual violence. In early February 2025, male inmates raped and burned over a hundred female inmates in a prison in the city of Goma following a jailbreak. This attack took place in the midst of the current upsurge of violence between the M23 rebel group on one side, and the Congolese military, vigilante groups, and UN peacekeepers on the other. As of February 2025, the insurgency has resulted in over 7000 deaths and while no reports have linked the mass rape to a political organisation, the attack demonstrates the scale of sexual crimes during warfare.

Mainstream media tends to over-rely on legal frameworks to legitimise any real issue. This results in a lack of meaningful reporting into “unfounded” topics, such as the manifestation of sexual violence in communities. While the legally binding Article of the Fourth Geneva convention (1949) states that, “Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault.”: there was still not enough reportage on wartime rape until the late 20th century. The Rwandan genocide of 1994, among other horrifying wars that took place during the decade, revealed how women are systemically abused in armed conflict.  During the genocide, an estimated 2500,000-500,000 women were raped within approximately 100 days, which gained international attention. Still, sexual violence in war was only considered a threat to peace and security in 2008 when UN resolution 1820 was passed. Since this topic has clearly not been a primary concern of international law, reporting on the roots of the instrumental use of wartime rape has naturally not received enough coverage in mainstream media. 

When these outlets actually address sexual violence during war, they present distorted representations of the women impacted by these atrocities. Rape victims are seen as collateral damage. They are given no name and no agency– as the reigning assumption is that they would surely never dare to resist their situation since it is “all they know.” Leela Gandhi’s essay Postcolonialism and Feminism, discussed this very topic through an analysis of the West’s conceptualisation of the “third world-woman” as she wrote that “such theory postulates the third-world woman’ as victim par excellence—the forgotten casualty of both imperial ideology, and native and foreign patriarchies.” 

Gandhi’s description precisely captures the passivity attributed to women in the Global South. It encompasses how the manifestation of gender based violence is often at best, treated as an afterthought and at worst, completely neglected. Take a look at the BBC article covering the Goma rape. Although no groups have taken credit for the assault, the article still contextualizes the ongoing insurgency and counterinsurgency in Eastern DRC. However, the article never addresses the culture of sexual violence in the DRC, nor does it acknowledge any acts of resistance. It does not mention findings about how “50% of women have experienced sexual violence in a domestic context” nor does it touch on the women’s marches calling for an end to the war. Instead, the use of passive voice treats the topic of rape as an incidental event in the conflict; and once again, rape is characterized as an arbitrary consequence of war. Women are presented as the unfortunate victims of this inevitable issue, with the article refusing to recognize the organized attack on women during war.

Wartime rape is often written about as if it were an individual rogue attack and not a system of violence worthy of political analysis. Yet whether one wants to admit it or not, wartime rape thrives off of government neglect. For example, UN experts on the crisis in the DRC affirmed the Rwandan government’s backing of the M23 group, one that has committed various human rights abuses including rape. The Human Rights Watch reported similar instances of sexual violence committed by Congolese soldiers since 2022. The UN itself confirmed that over 90% of sexual assault allegations against peacekeepers in 2023 originated from The DRC and The Central African Republic. Nonetheless, the consequences of mass sexual violence committed by government and IGO (Intergovernmnetal Organizations) agents lacks thorough investigation. Although there has been an increased recognition of sexual crimes, such as the ongoing trial of soldiers in the DRC accused of rape, governments still fail to take a closer look at the how the culture of sexual violence in armed conflict manifests.

Mass sexual violence during war is not incidental. It is a military strategy that humiliates and demoralizes women with the aim to humiliate and demoralize their societies. From the system of comfort women in imperial Japan to the increased rape in the DRC, women’s sexual subjugation has historically been magnified in military conflict. Therefore, it is entirely necessary for more in-depth analysis into the use of rape as a war tactic to be taken.

Media coverage must take a clearer stance when reporting the violence committed by soldiers and the failures to address the root of these crimes. We must reject the idea that Congolese women are unnamed victims. We must affirm the agency of women in the DRC conflict, as well as women globally. 

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Every year, countless students escape Montreal’s brutal winter in favour of destinations promising warmth and endless parties. Unfortunately, this form of tourism also generates the perfect playground for reckless behaviour as routines are abandoned, study habits dissolve into weekday partying, and the thrill of rebellion takes over. 

In 2024, The Toronto Sun released an article exposing the disgusting aftermath of spring breakers who left a Georgia beach littered with, well, litter. Initially posted to social media, the coverage sparked outrage, with many commenters criticizing the blatant disrespect shown by student tourists.

While cities anticipate this type of behaviour, preparing for an influx of young party-goers each year, Florida’s beaches have become particularly notorious for such scenes. In preparation for 2025’s spring season, Miami Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Daytona Beach ramped up police surveillance in an effort to control the state’s annual mayhem. While stricter law enforcement has led to a decline in overall attendance, it has not stopped many students from making the trip south. 

Meanwhile, publications continue to cater to spring breakers eager to make the most of their vacation. In March 2025, The Palm Beach Post published a guide outlining alcohol regulations across Florida’s beaches, providing visitors with crucial tips for a trouble-free break. While these efforts to maintain order can be helpful, they also highlight a broader question: how do trip guides contribute to the commercialization of spring break?

An influx of tourists means an influx of spending, and the authors of travel tricks and city guides are well aware of this. While they aim to make student travel as hassle-free as possible, their efforts go far beyond convenience. Travel expenses often go hand-in-hand with fashion purchases, as many students feel pressured to “look their best” on vacation. Packing lists and travel recommendations are frequently designed to push products, reinforcing the notion that a trip will be ruined without certain must-haves. Brands of all sizes capitalize on this mindset, launching spring ad campaigns and exclusive deals to entice buyers.

However, with the rise of social media, companies no longer need to work as hard to drive demand. Influencers eagerly take on that role, showcasing their spring break hauls across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Fast fashion brands like SHEIN benefit from this cycle, offering trendy, budget-friendly pieces that fuel the desire to stay stylish without breaking the bank.

But what do these trends truly offer their buyers? Where do these products end up? And who ultimately profits from student spending? The answer, for many of us, is already clear.

Litter and waste take many forms: empty bottles scattered across sandy beaches from last night’s festivities and plastic bikinis worn once, now sinking to the ocean floor. Spring break is not just a trip; it is a product, commercialized by brands and influencers who sell it as the experience of a lifetime, a week to go wild, the ultimate university vacation. 

Spring break should be a time to unwind, not an obligation to overspend on microplastics and fleeting trends. A good time should not come with a price tag. Corny or not, the truth stands: a trip’s defining moments, the ones that last, are found in the people you are with and the memories you create together. Those must-have sandals? Quickly forgotten.

In an interview with The News Movement, Charli xcx distilled the essence of brat down to just a few essentials: a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and a white, strappy tank worn with no bra. The album and its aesthetic are not driven by consumerism, but instead prove that style and attitude do not require excess. It remains trendy and accessible without being built on piles of microplastics—though her later collaboration with H&M complicates this message. Her partnership with a major retailer inevitably ties it to an industry that encourages accumulation rather than minimalism, raising questions about the sustainability of its aesthetic ideals.

Nevertheless, Charli suggests that these few items are all one needs to embody the party-girl energy of her music, which speaks to a larger cultural message: you do not need “stuff” to be cool, to have fun, or to fit in. It is about the vibe you bring to the function, the energy you carry inside yourself, and the joy you share with the people closest to you.

So, the next time “Spring breakers” plays or you find yourself reminiscing about a past trip, think about the memories you made. Did the swimsuits you wore define those moments? The essence of spring break lies not in the excess but in the moments that prove you never truly needed it.

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