Tears should never be shed needlessly, but they were at last Thursday's General Assembly. When debate on a motion to condemn the bombing of educational institutions in Gaza was suspended indefinitely, the room was overcome with emotion. Some students rejoiced in their perceived victory, while others wept because of their perceived defeat.
Let's talk shop. I mean that quite literally. The Students' Society has a wide range of business ventures that the average student knows very little about. I've sat on SSMU's Operations Committee, so you could say I know a thing or two about a thing or two.
When I was a young and impressionable freshman, a management graduate gave me some invaluable advice: "Don't be a jerk." Older, wiser, and much better dressed than any of us freshmen, his words of wisdom stuck with me. Of course, he later contributed to the impoverishment of child workers in developing nations (I jest-sort of).
I hate direct democracy. And I especially hate the Students' Society's General Assemblies, which aren't valid forums for political discourse. Democracies operate under the principle that everyone has an equal right to representation in government. They function properly when the voices in the legislature are representative of the population being governed.
On February 3, the Montreal Economic Institute published an 84-page study recommending the privatization of Hydro-Québec. Obviously, this will be a hard sell in Quebec: privatizing government-owned utilities is rarely a popular idea in this province, especially when it comes to the province's electrical crown jewel.
I usually leave the Tribune's opinion pages feeling enlightened or enriched by the material I have just absorbed in the newspaper. But last Tuesday, I left disappointed and enraged. This was because I had just finished reading Danai Reynolds' absurd and vapid bombast against the supposed evil empire of the United States of America in her article "Arrogance and the American way.
Telling the whole story about Castro's Cuba I think a couple bright sides weren't really exposed in the article about Cuba ("Looking at the Cuba Fidel Castro has built," 03.02.09). It seems to me that, here in Canada, we don't have that great of a choice, especially when Coca-Cola takes over every single counter of every single store, or McGill residence and cafeteria, that I want to buy a drink from.
In last week's article "Not your ordinary cup of joe," John Weiss was credited with working on the Hubble Space Telescope. In fact, Weiss worked on imaging software for NASA's Terra and Aqua satellite programs. Also, the photos for last week's article "SynesthASIA" were incorrectly credited to Olivia Perdana.