On November 7 I attended McGill’s annual joint meeting of the Board of Governors and Senate. The theme was “Exploring Transformations to Adapt to New Opportunities and Challenges Facing McGill”. Maryse Bertrand, chair of the Board of Governors, and President Deep Saini spent about 10 minutes bantering about whether transformation was “needed” or “imperative”. I’m […]
As Vice President University Affairs, a student senator, and a student, I have the following requests for the Ad Hoc Committee to Review the Composition of Senate. I owe some of these suggestions to Nicholas Dunn in 2017, Tre Mansdoerfer in 2018, and Madeleine Wilson in 2019. Dunn and Wilson requested early revisions of the […]
Our ATI Workshop in Brief
On Wednesday September 25, the University Affairs Secretary General and I held a ‘access to information request workshop’. To those who couldn’t make it to our workshop on Wednesday, don’t worry! The highlights are reported on here and immortalized for as long as this site (or the Internet archive) is up. Those requesting access to […]
The State of Deadnaming
Originally written at the end of summer. Some things may have changed. Deadnaming at McGill is an issue floating around all trans people. We accidentally out ourselves while using the printer or logging into MyCourses, we have the wrong name read out on attendance sheets, and we are baffled by the randomness of our deadnames […]
The Official Record of Senate
The philosophy of Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised (RONR) is that “the minutes should contain mainly a record of what was done at the meeting, not what was said by the members. The minutes must never reflect the secretary’s opinion, favorable or otherwise, on anything said or done”. I would argue that there are […]
The SSMU VP University Affairs supplies McGill committees with student members. I take this as a serious responsibility. Students have a stake in where our tuition goes, our education, and the services offered to us. Often we can offer personal experience and we can advocate for improvements without having alternative interests. Student participation is even […]