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Students' Society of McGill University

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  • Muslim Awareness Week and the Relevancy of Bill 21

    Bill 21 is an act that forbids many civil servants, including police officers, teachers, and government lawyers , from wearing religious symbols. The Act directly impacts all religious individuals who wear religious symbols – kippahs, turbans, hijabs, and more. However, the stakes are especially significant for Muslim women. As of November 22, 100 per cent of people who lost jobs as teachers were women wearing a hijab. 

    Bill 21 was originally passed by the National Assembly in June 2019. At the time, McGill students and staff mobilized against the bill, handing out tens of thousands of anti Bill 21 pins and organizing rallies and sit-ins.  In April 2019, six unions (AGSEM, AMURE, MCLIU, MUNACA, MUNASA, SEU) and four associations (PGSS, SSMU, MACES, and MAUT) signed a statement against the Act. SSMU added a few paragraphs, writing “[t]wo years after the Quebec mosque shooting and two weeks after the same vile hatred caused another horrific mosque shooting in New Zealand, our government should be actively working to address the impacts and effects of white supremacy in our society. Instead, it chooses to actively fuel it.”

    Now that energy has waned, as those most affected have emigrated out of Quebec or gave up on pursuing public sector careers. It doesn’t help that there’s overlap between demographics affected by this legislation and by the war on Gaza, circumstances ripe for burnout.

    The best hope to stop Bill 21 now is the Supreme Court. In April of last year, leave to appeal was filed at the Supreme court by Ichrak Nour El Hak, the National Council of Canadian Muslims, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. As their factum notes, the act bars individuals from participating in public institutions based on their religion. On January 23, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal.

    Muslim Awareness Week runs from January 24 to 31. One of its events is a talk, ‘The Era of Law 21: Impacts on Muslim Women and the Making of a New Normal’. It will be held on 3644 Peel,  on January 31, at 16h30. Attendance is free.

    As the federal elections approach, pro-immigrant and anti-Islamophobic advocacy is imperative. Some advocacy can be personal and small-scale, like intervening when you witness microaggressions or keeping religious holidays in mind when organizing events. Ideally, this support would be coupled with political engagement, to affect change at a legislative level. If you’re interested in joining efforts to counter Bill 21, email me at ua@ssmu.ca.

    For religious students and staff who are struggling, McGill offers some resources. The Muslim Student Affairs Liaison can be reached at farah.chouayakh@mcgill.ca, the Jewish Student Affairs Liaison can be reached at  rachel.hatcher@mcgill.ca, and McGill’s Office of Religious and Spiritual Life can be reached at morsl@mcgill.ca, but you can also drop-in to their space during business hours.

    Pins that say "Loi 21" and have a slash across it.
    Image taken from the McGill Against Bill 21 Facebook page.

  • The “this sucks!” phase

    This was written yesterday, December 3, then edited and published today.

    As I write, the SSMU newsletter has announced the special general assembly on Thursday, to consider a motion to remove the President.

    I get the frustration. I was loosely involved in the development of a gender neutral bathroom motion, to bring the number of gender-neutral bathrooms in SSMU buildings up to the same standard as those at McGill. After sending it to Steering Committee, we were told that “it had come to [their] attention” that the motion could contravene ‘McGill policy“. As I wrote in a fairly emotional return email, “Until a McGill policy is presented that contradicts the ideas proposed, this refusal is arbitrary and discriminatory…As per Robert’s Rules, and because the Standing Rules does not impose additional restrictions, I will be giving notice of motion at this Legislative Council”. Right now, the motion itself is not on the Legislative Council agenda. When I try to amend the agenda, I suspect that the chair will rule the amendment out of order or will simply ignore it. Steering Committee keeps discourse at SSMU tightly controlled, and Dymetri is a member of this committee with significant influence. Some blame for the failure of this policy lies with him, as a member of Steering. Other blame also lies with him, as the elected representative of SSMU.

    But I think Dymetri is a good president. He co-signed a Senate question with me about breaches in the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Processes. He’s supported my demand letter to McGill and my use of legal assistance to advise on deadnaming. He was fundamental to our first exec communication on police brutality. My grievance with the Steering Committee is not about individual bigots, but rather a culture of conservatism and transphobia so culturally ingrained it has become invisible. It’s about the process of scrutinizing motions ahead of time, not the people doing the scrutinizing. I do think removal of people in power is a tool that should be used. I don’t think Dymetri is the right target.

    An old Vice President University Affairs told me that the worst part of SSMU is when there’s antagonism among student leaders. You expect to fight with McGill, but you don’t expect to also be fighting your peers. I’ve been thrown by students who silently vote to kill your motions, or whose prime interest lies in avoiding the perception of ideological bias. I’m disturbed by the inconsistent application of the rules. I’m tired of being the token trans person on the Board, who has to remind Directors that our demographic exists. I’m sick of the ratification process that is a rubber-stamp except when Palestine is involved, the looming threat of legal repercussions that makes cowards of us all. I’m scared by my instinctive desire to prioritize the smoothness of SSMU over its obligation to its rules and principles; I need to remind myself, always, of my position of power and responsibility towards the people that try and fail to escalate issues to their appropriate scale.

    I wish I wasn’t positioned against the will of the majority – that I am grateful for what I previously considered a tyrannically high quorum requirement. Perhaps if I was able to take enough steps back – like, the amount of steps back so that I’m reading 2024-2025 like I read 2009-2010 in the archives of a student newspaper – I would again be on the side of the petitioners. But I know Dymetri. He is diligent, careful, awkward and passionate. I’m too close to this issue, in a thousand ways. How can one not be?

    When I learned that GA quorum was previously 100 and had recently been increased to 350, I thought it was a cheap trick from executives to consolidate power and sidestep inconvenient popular demands. I still believe it, but my position has been somewhat nuanced. With 24,000 undergraduate students, a 1 per cent quorum is 240. If students show up to a GA in force, and call for Dymetri’s removal in the hundreds, I would be won over. It would send a powerful message to future executives (and members of the steering committee) that the petition for a general assembly must be respected, and that hand-waving about legal restrictions is unacceptable. If over 100 but less than 350 people show up (presuming the majority would vote for removal) then I am truly conflicted.

    Coming from ‘the inside’ I can safely say things are more complicated than they appear. The strike motion wasn’t meant to be for the same week as the Montreal wide one. The group was able to resubmit a motion with different language. The leaked legal opinion stresses the need for consultation with lawyers. But sometimes that doesn’t matter. Sometimes things are simply unacceptable. I’m interested to know what the student body will decide. If Dymetri is removed, I will be worried about my workload, disappointed for the SSMU staff that he supports, and sad for the person who, from hours of having each others’ backs during tense admin meetings, I can’t help but care for. But I guess this isn’t about me. And I certainly don’t think I’m in the best position to be making these decisions. Maybe a special GA is.

  • Transformation to Where?

    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 only a lowly undergraduate student, and so maybe nuance is going over my head, but I fail to see how these synonyms are meaningfully different.

    I found the premise confusing. I don’t understand how we can be pro- or anti- change without knowing what these changes are. Sure, McGill will transform, but these transformations are not value neutral. What are our goals? The rhetoric of progress for progress’s sake is corporate-coded and reminds me of a book recently featured on the podcast ‘If Books Could Kill’ called Who Moved My Cheese? The book’s message is to be grateful for opportunities created by change, as a general concept. In practice, it’s used to repress complaints about unfair working conditions or illegal layoffs.

    The last point in Deep Saini’s introductory remarks was a call for everyone at the university to start taking responsibility. He wanted us to move past the myth that it’s senior administration who bears the duty for McGill’s success. President Saini has seemed extremely unenthused when members of the McGill community have risen to that call. He was certainly not a fan of the encampment, or the many protests on campus, or conversation at Senate about campus security, or faculty’s unionization efforts. If Deep Saini is expressing a desire for a more communal approach to university governance, I wholeheartedly agree, but I wonder instead if his words are a plea for us to stop complaining.

    The entire series of presentation seemed designed to soft-launch “cost-saving” measures at the expense of smaller programs or initiatives not directly related to academics. Chris Buddle started his presentation by saying that he argues everyday with people about how everything has costs. He spent the next several slides “just asking questions” about whether it could be worth it to remove programs with less than 20 students enrolled. A short while later, Vice President Labeau commented that small classrooms are empty about 50 per cent of the time. Buddle stressed that non active programs or courses could be ‘reactivated’ if there was interest, but I do wonder how interest about a non-existent program can be ascertained, if it cannot be enrolled in or applied for. I did enjoy his reference of “those of us in the James building”. I wonder if, in the spirit of blaming senior administrators less, we should relocate their offices to various buildings on campus.

    During the question period, faculty expressed concern about burnout among their marginalized members and the cutting of smaller, less profitable programs. One Senator asked about the risks of a “mean and lean” approach, and as an example, “slashing poetry and beefing up corporate law”. We’re not slashing, was the response. Rather, it’s “careful reflection”. I’ve seen many questions dodged by reprimanding the question asker for hyperbolic wording. But the answer is clear: yes, program cutting is how we will save money, and yes, you should be worried.

    In his concluding remarks, Deep Saini equated academic excellence and reputation. I think that’s actually a big assumption. I fear for student services, or small, experimental classes that do not earn us rankings in McLean’s or that earn Deep Saini bragging points with his Harvard buddies.

    I don’t like to be paranoid, but, especially as Deep Saini concluded his speech with a request that “today [..] we start trusting each other”, I am worried that we are being manipulated into uninformed consent for the neoliberal-izing of McGill. I think we must reject the call to unconditionally embrace transformation, but that we do energetically take up the call for community responsibility to determine the destination.

  • My Feedback to the Ad Hoc Committee on the Composition of Senate

    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 Senate composition that were not granted.

    1. Maintain a majority of elected academic staff
    The 2014 review of Senate indicates that keeping over 50 per cent elected academic staff is integral to the identity of Senate. They wrote, “the Committee believes it is important to preserve this historical majority” (https://www.mcgill.ca/senate/files/senate/d13-66_ad_hoc_committee_to_review_the_composition_of_senate_report.pdf).

    2. Add seats for union representatives
    Workers are fundamental to fulfilling McGill’s academic mission. McGill prides itself on its rating as a top employer (https://reporter.mcgill.ca/mcgill-rated-one-of-montreals-top-employers/). As such, it should make efforts to incorporate workers into decisions that affect the entire McGill community. I propose the addition of a seat for an AGSEM, AMURE, AMUSE, MCLIU, MUNACA, and SEU representative.

    3. Have unions elect representatives for their faculty
    When faculties have unions, these unions should be responsible for electing representatives, in line with McGill’s committment to collegiality between administrators and professors. Specifically, AMPL should elect law representatives, AMPFA its arts representatives, and AMPE its education representatives.

    4. Add seats for course lecturers
    Course lecturers are vital to the quality of education that McGill students receive and should be included in Senate.

    5. Add seats for SSMU members
    At SSMU, we divide our 13 Senators in the following way:
    President, VP University Affairs, 2 representatives from Arts, and 1 representative from Science, Arts and Science, Education, Management, Medicine, Law, Engineering, Music, and Nursing. Each undergraduate faculty association selects their representative. We are currently unable to offer student Senate seats to the Schools of Social Work & Physical and Occupational Therapy, as well as the Faculty of Dentistry, all of whom operate their own independent student associations. Additionally, because of an increase in the size of the department, the SUS (Science Undergraduate Society) is interested in having another representative.

    6. Require that those elected from faculty not be Vice Deans, Associate Deans, or Associate Vice-Presidents
    Out of the elected members, there are 8 who occupy administrative positions of Vice Deans, Associate Deans, or Associate Vice-Presidents. An election where some candidates are in positions of power over other candidates cannot be considered fair.

    7. Move allocation from faculty restricted seats to at-large representation
    There is often a discrepancy between seats allocated to a faculty and interest within that faculty. This can cause year-long vacancies in seats that could be eagerly filled by otherwise qualified academics. Senate has a preoccupation with representativeness that conflicts with the responsibility of fellows identified by the Secretary General in correspondance with SSMU in 2019: “when voting, each Senator is asked to bear in mind the University’s best interests and not just those of his or her constituency”.

    8. Add a seat for MCGSS
    Undergraduates from the Macdonald campus have a permanent seat on Senate, but graduate students from the Macdonald campus don’t. In a question submitted to Senate on May 15, 2017, Senators Dunn, Sobat, and Singh write “the academic needs of MCGSS members are often distinct from those of other PGSS members and deserve to be represented at Senate” (https://www.mcgill.ca/senate/files/senate/question_and_response_regarding_senate_composition.pdf).

    9. Update the Religious Studies Faculty
    The Statutes make reference to a Senate seat for a Faculty member from the School of Religious Studies, which is now part of the Faculty of Arts.

    10. Incorporate Indigenous McGill Community Members
    Call to Action 22 of the Final Report of the Provost’s Task Force on Indigenous Studies and Indigenous Education calls for increased Indigenous representation in University governance, particularly at the levels of Senate and the Board. As of when the section was last updated in November 2022, this item is listed as ‘Achieved’ because “There is discussion of a potential Senate seat”. To list this item as Achieved, and then to deny Indigenous stakeholders a seat, would be incredibly misleading (https://www.mcgill.ca/indigenous/calls-action/4-research-and-academic-complement/achievements/achievements).

    11. Have people occupy only one seat at Senate
    When a fellow is appointed Dean, their previous seat should be automatically declared vacant. Right now on the Senate website, for example, Tony Mittermaier has two seats on Senate, which lends itself to absurdities (e.g. does he have two votes)? The current composition also allows there to be two ex-officio seats that are held by one person, for example, if a Dean were also a Vice President. This is a harder issue to resolve. One solution would be to remove ex-officio seats for Deans. Another is to specify through which capacity someone sits on Senate, and leave the other ex-officio seat vacant.

    12. Consider power structures within Senate roles.
    Some Senators are the direct supervisor of other Senators. For example, the Deputy-Provost (Student Life and Learning) has the power to replace the Dean of Students. This could lead to the Dean of Students feeling political pressure at Senate. The two obvious ways to remedy this situation is remove the role of supervisor or the supervised.

    An issue previously identified in the Senate composition was that the position of Associate Provost (Equity and Academic Policies) wasn’t included. Now this position is obsolete. When McGill creates new positions, the composition of Senate should be immediately revised so that it is not out-of-date for years on end. Also, McGill should consider the longevity of its created positions. That a new position was created and abolished within one cycle of Senate review suggests that McGill governance is short-sighted in this respect.

  • 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 documents from McGill invoke the Act respecting Access to documents held by public bodies and the Protection of personal information (capitalized according to LégisQuébec, which is not at all the same as my anglophone instincts). Important sections are sprinkled throughout, perhaps to make sure you read it all. But we’ll cheat and let you know which sections are most used.

    Section 9 is the relevant section for accessing documents. It says, “Every person has a right of access, on request, to the documents held by a public body.” What is a public body? You can find a list of public bodies on the Commission d’accèss a l’information website.

    Other sections you’ll become acquainted with are the many limitations. Section 9 itself includes a limitation that lets the University withhold draft documents. Recently, we’ve been requesting information pertaining to security and the encampment dismantlement, and sections 28, 29, and 37 were invoked. Many limitations give permission for a public body to withhold documents – Sections 28 and 29 require that the public body withholds documents. Section 28 says “a public body must refuse to release or to confirm the existence of information contained in a document that it keeps in the exercise of a duty provided for by law involving the prevention, detection or repression of crime or statutory offences”. Section 29 is similar, and relates to information disclosure that is “likely to be used to commit a crime or a statutory offence”. It then elaborates that the public body must withhold information that impairs any systems designed to protect persons or property.

    Another section that McGill has used in a broad range of requests is that they can refuse to give a written opinion from a member “in the discharge of his duties” less than 10 years ago. Consider that this means we can now get more information about opinions presented during the 2012 student strikes.
    Finally, McGill has used section 53 which concerns personal information. This doesn’t hold if you’re the person in question. It can be valuable to ask for records of yourself, especially if you suspect that administrators or professors are talking about you behind your back.

    McGill has an antagonistic past with access to information requests. McGill University has actually brought students to the Commission d’access à l’information before. In 2012, a website called McGilliLeaked was created to publish ATI requests submitted by anyone to the university. It was based on McGillileaks the year prior, which was shut down because that website collected confidential leaks.

    McGill asked permission of the Commission to refuse all future ATI requests from 14 students that they deemed connected to McGilliLeaked. McGill argued that the requests were abusive and were vengeful after the 2012 student movement. One reporter from the Link, a Concordia newspaper, said that he was named in the request but submitted only two ATI requests to McGill, and passed them on to McGilliLeaked given that they were public documents. A spokesperson from McGill said ATI requests jumped from 37 in 2011 to 170 in 2012. McGill lost this request. The Commission determined that McGill was asking to impose restrictions that changed the Act.

    If you are unsatisfied with the documents, you have 30 days to appeal to the commission. This is where the process becomes quite drawn out. Once taking on the complaint, the Commission assigns a mediator. Mediation doesn’t delay the hearing date, and is free and voluntary. If the conflict isn’t resolved, then a decision is made via hearing. This becomes public except under exceptional circumstances, but it’s worth noting that ‘it’s weird for everyone to know my name over an ATI request’ is not typically considered an exceptional circumstance. A hearing never gives out damages to a person, so don’t expect any money, but it can impose fines onto the public body, both for refusing to give documents that they should, or giving documents that they shouldn’t. After the hearing, a decision is transmitted to both practices within 3 months of hearings. From my brief perusal of previous decisions (found on the fabulous website canlii.org) previous decisions have compelled McGill to hand over documents it was previously refusing to disclose.

    No matter where you are in the ATI-process, the office of the UA is here to help! We’re willing to guide you through crafting a request, and we’re also collecting responses from McGill to post to our website (if you’re comfortable). Finally, we are especially interests in folks that pursue a request with the Commission. Send us an email anytime at ua@ssmu.ca.

  • 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 haunting various McGill platforms.

    Many before us have tried to solve the problem, only to be discouraged by its scope, contradictions, and stagnant progress. McGill’s equity equity committee has claimed to be working on it almost every year since at least 2005, but their members have no idea what the status is. And most of McGill is entirely uninterested.

    The deadnaming campaign is a small number of trans students who decided we would fix automated deadnaming. When we started talking about it in October, the task before us seemed impossible.

    We started with a lot of cold emails and meeting requests. One of the first people we met was from Enrollment Services. She had been working on implementing preferred names as part of her job in EDI for three years. She welcomed our advice eliminating what she thought were those final edge cases. We had to break the news to her that the problems were still systemic. To fix some instances of deadnaming, students were being directed to email back-and-forth with her boss, a process she was unfamiliar with. I don’t think this is her fault.I imagine it’s the consequence of hiring token EDI employees but never giving them power, information, or the ability to connect with the community.

    We started compiling a list of issues, and sent her an email every time a new one popped up. But we didn’t want to put all our hopes there. So we emailed SAA, the Wellness Hub, and departments where we saw problems.. And an email to the Wellness Hub made it to Fabrice Labeau, the Deputy-Provost of Student Life and Learning.

    We congratulated ourselves on creating enough noise to reach upper admin, then prepared for a meeting of platitudes. But the meeting proved more productive than we expected. He promised us a committee to gather all McGill employees necessary to solve the problem. And so the Ad-Hoc Committee on Preferred Names – or as, we call it, the Deadnaming Committee – was made. It includes employees from HR, central IT, the Wellness Hub, and Enrollment Services, among others. I get a lot of pleasure listening to eight McGill employees, including the Deputy-Provost ( what an expensive meeting!) grapple with how best to deal with trans people.

    In an early meeting, the Deputy-Provost suggested a problem-tracker, which he guessed would take his office a month to compile. We made one overnight and published it to the Queer McGill website. The Deputy-Provost got wind of our homemade problem-tracker and it was an agenda item for our next meeting. But if he was annoyed at us for overstepping, he couldn’t say so. And so he based his problem-tracker around ours.

    Throughout the process we found unexpected enemies and unexpected allies. The Wellness Hub gestured at unspecified legal requirements for why they couldn’t issue doctor notes with a preferred name, and student residences were nothing short of a disaster. When I ran into an employee from Student Housing at a Meet McGill fair, and told him I heard from trans residents that they were getting deadnamed, he said, “no they’re not”. Although that attitude has shifted slightly with time, we didn’t trust that housing employees knew or cared about how their systems failed. So we went around to the front desks of all the residences. We got inconsistent and confused answers. One person refused to tell us whether they were ever shown multiple names for students.

    The next natural step, if SHHS employees wouldn’t talk to us, was to put up our posters in residences. They read: “Are you being deadnamed by McGill? We want to hear from you”. When we went to get them approved by SHHS, their employee told us the posters were “political” and required a special process. I emailed the posters to her boss, who asked us to change the wording so that it didn’t mention McGill. We refused. We were sent to the Dean of Students Office, where we met with the Assistant Dean, Cindy Mancuso. She agreed that our posters were political, and reprimanded us for using a rude tone and being too demanding. Finally, we met with Daniel Fournier, Associate Director of Residence Life. He told us that there were guidelines for posters put up in residences. We asked to see it. He said no. After going back and forth for 15 minutes, he kicked us out of his office. We did get a small revenge though. A legal access to information request got us the internal guidelines shortly afterwards. Email us and we’ll send it to you!

    Sometimes I worry I have a certain kind of entitlement. Trans people are often so stoic about deadnaming. They shrug it off dozens of times a day. They shield their laptop screens with paper. They avoid some systems altogether. And even the memories of discrimination only surface with some prodding. Sometimes it feels like the campaign asks too much.

    But I also want to push back against this guilt which seems like residual shame. It’s important to the campaign that its members are righteously angry. It fuels us. Entitlement got us insulted by McGill staff, but the entitlement is also why we win. We refuse to accept a transphobic answer as anything short of transphobic. And although we’ve had dozens of interactions that try to cast doubt on this, we know it is true.