At the beginning of my term, I was told a protestor could literally light themselves on fire during Senate and McGill wouldn’t divest. During meetings I keep returning to the idea. Self-immolation would first be seen as violence to Senate members. My death would be secondary to the crime of exposing others to it; just like the violence of seeing photos of famine, of chalk on a gate that’s power washed off every night.
I sit, calmly, as I’m told a senior executive at RBC decided we shouldn’t divest from military weapons because it would be unseemly for the University to “be perceived as one motivated by geopolitical considerations.” My paragraphs-long feedback to the CSSR during their consultation period is used to give the report legitimacy. Its contents are dismissed as “ethical and social motivations.” The traditional avenues to effect change are closed to us. The CSSR does not say whether the majority of student input was for or against divestment.
In the referendum question, “what should SSMU focus on?” divestment from military technology was mentioned 52 times – the fourth most frequent answer – unprompted by any prior reference to it. McGill’s endowment is so far removed from our control, and it’s at the front of our minds. When we graduate, we’re prompted to donate. We’re paid out of it to afford the increasing tuition. And for the rest of our lives, our resumes are branded with McGill’s name. So where is SSMU?
Last year, a moratorium was created on ancillary fees specifically to demand for divestment of military technology. A year later, in the last Legislative Council session I will ever attend, that moratorium was effectively killed, carving out exceptions at the cost of a meeting with administration. The motion excluded three responses to a consultation form, one of which was several paragraphs long. Because her response was excluded, a SSMU member sought to read it outloud. But before she could be recognized, the question was called, and with no debate, Legislative Council approved the motion via secret-ballot.
Facts fold to convenience. There was no hiding the predetermined goal of killing the moratorium, regardless of whether McGill divested. There was no curiosity of its effect or lack thereof. Sitting alone on the grass across Thompson House later that evening, I wanted to ditch my bag, hike up into the darkness, and have the mountain swallow me up, never to be seen again. It’s that same feeling I get hearing the Board report at Senate that “[t]he Board […] received an update on the CSSR’s review of the expression of concern” and no more. The arguments are equally unimaginative, arriving predestined at personal benefit, unwilling to leave space for dissent.
On June 6 the tear gas launchers sounded like gunshots. After returning from an indoor meeting, I stepped outside into a foreign landscape. The air was heavy with gas. Three students stepped from the cloud, one with a gash, one with a limp. My mind jumped to the Kent State Massacre. I was sure the SPVM had brought death to our campus. In the next few days, videos circled of people lying on the ground being beaten with batons. I felt nauseous looking at them, but I couldn’t look away. My mother texted me, saying that even Ottawa newspapers were reporting on the brutality of the police response. I couldn’t respond.
McGill must not bear the costs of conflict half a world away, the President says in opening Senate remarks. Unfortunately many of us return home to conflict every evening. Earlier that day I stood at the back of the James Administration building, next to a masked legal observer. The President took a photo of me, and sent it to his colleagues. An hour later, Dymetri was being texted by the Chancellor about me. At the time, I was living with my grandparents. I was terrified that the photo would be shared as widely as possible and I’d be homeless. What rights does someone have, after that, to draw the lines of Antisemitism?
Being a Jew this year is profoundly disconsonant. On one hand, when Black and Brown friends tell me they’ve been trailed by security guards, McGill security is supposedly acting to protect me. When SPHR and IJV cohost events, it’s SPHR that bears the brunt of criticism and outrage. No one knows how to handle “independent Jewish voices”. My ethical qualms with Israel have isolated me from my community when I needed their support most, cleaving impenetrable paths between myself and my loved ones as I mourn synagogue attacks and the human rights violations of the IDF.
When I attend a meeting with senior administration, I am sworn to secrecy. It’s never in the best interest of our membership to agree to confidential meetings with those in power. I feel dirty after. The cognitive dissonance is deafening. I can’t keep doing this. During Senate, Fabrice Labeau says some people are unsettled by security. Others are unsafe without it. Was I also unsettled by the riot cop who hit me for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Our campus, in my eyes, is a battleground, not for the paned up windows but for the bitter smell of teargas, the photos of beatings that flash on my eyelids, the sweep of riot police pushing people aside like dolls in their path. I couldn’t bring myself apply to McGill for graduate studies. The University will justify not divesting from military technology because it is being used to kill Palestinians. After a year of office, I am leaving more radicalized, and less convinced by the merits of due process, than when I entered.
Those in power are not secret masterminds pulling strings. There is no secret justification. Frankness reveals simple ugliness, and, like a good McGill student, I know what side of the political spectrum intellect lies on. My education has steered me away from the cruel optimism of institutionally approved strategy. I am a student, a reader, a researcher, and my mind has been opened, my faculties sharpened, in time to recognize what I want my role here to be.
