[spacer height="20px"]By Angela Dittrich
As young adults, we experience a lot of exciting and important milestones — getting our driver’s license, attaining legal adulthood and entering university, college or the workforce. An often overlooked milestone is becoming a voter, or rather, becoming individuals with a rarely-exercised right to vote.
McMaster University students are a vital part of the Ward 1 community, and yet we continuously fail to show up to the polling stations. And before I continue, yes, you can vote here. Not only can you vote here, you should — whether you live in residence, in a student home, or commute from another part of the city.
On October 22nd, 2018, The Municipal Elections will take place to determine the new Mayor and Ward Councillors for the Hamilton area. Get your voice heard by voting is upcoming election. #MacVotes https://t.co/Q9arEqrdc0 pic.twitter.com/kALkZgbmTw
— McMaster Humanities (@mcmasterhum) October 12, 2018
Hamilton, for better or worse, is your home for on average four years of undergrad, and potentially beyond. Electoral issues such as housing, transit, and safety affect every one of us on a daily basis. If we speak up and elect a councillor willing to listen, we can influence real change in this city. This election, I urge you to consider some of these major issues, evaluate what matters most to you, and make certain your opinion is heard.
With 25,000 undergraduate students and only 4000 beds on campus, navigating through off-campus housing, landlords, and leases is part of the typical McMaster student experience. Unfortunately, there are homes packed to over-capacity, absent or negligent landlords and rising costs of rent which create levels of stress beyond what students should be experiencing.
As well, safety has become a major concern for many student housing neighbourhoods due to an increased number of break-ins this year. We are much more than university students; we are members of this community. We need to elect a councillor who will make housing a priority, hold landlords accountable, and address our safety concerns to make our neighbourhoods a better and safer place.
One of the most defining features of this election is transit. The fate of our proposed light rail transit system hangs in the balance as Doug Ford threatens to revoke the promised provincial funding. While transit is not the most exciting issue, it significantly impacts our everyday lives. McMaster would house an LRT terminal, providing us with a faster and more reliable way to get around and explore the city. The McMaster Students Union has taken a pro-LRT stance, and if we want this project to succeed, our Ward 1 councillor and mayor must be on board.
A more current issue is the Hamilton Street Railway. In 2017, students voted to increase tuition fees in exchange for expanded HSR service. However, last fall, there were over 200 hours of missed bus service each week, to the point where students could not rely on public transit to arrive to their exams on time. McMaster students are the HSR’s largest rider group, contributing over $4.5 million annually, yet we are constantly overlooked in times of financial stress. By voting, we show the city that our transit needs must be valued, and that the level of service provided needs to match our financial contributions.
If you’re still unsure, think about it this way — your voice is just as powerful, just as important, and just as valued as those who have lived in Hamilton for decades. We are all impacted by at least one key issue in this election: housing, transit, safety, the environment, student relations, student job opportunities, or economic growth.
But voting comes with great responsibility. Take the time to research the Ward 1 and mayoral candidates, as well as their stances on the key issues. Many young adults feel like their vote doesn’t matter, and unfortunately, by the way we are viewed by most of city council, that feeling makes sense. But this can change if we vote.
Go out to lunch with your friends and swing by the voting station. Talk to your classmates about why you’re planning to vote. Make a post on social media about your voting experience or issues that matter to you. We should all leave a place better than we found it, and making your voice heard in this Hamilton election is an incredible first step. On Oct. 22, make your vote count. See you at the polls, Marauders.
For information on Ward 1 councillor candidate platforms:
[button link="https://www.thesil.ca/meet-your-ward-1-councillor-candidates" color="red"]VIEW ALL CANDIDATE PLATFORMS[/button]
Questions on how to vote?
[button link="https://www.thesil.ca/ward-1-voting-101-a-voting-guide-for-mac-students" color="red"]WARD 1 VOTING GUIDE[/button]
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Content Warning: This article mentions disordered eating.
By Natalie Wylie
With a growing amount of nearly 30,000 likes and over 5,000 pictures and posts, it is no wonder that every time I open Facebook Spotted at Mac is the first notification that pops up on my feed. Spotted at Mac is a Facebook page that is based on anonymous submissions from students from the McMaster community. The page is multifaceted, as it represents a place for laughs and jokes but also a seemingly comfortable place where people go for help, tips and advice on a plethora of different topics.
Before coming into first year, Facebook was becoming obsolete in my daily life but after officially accepting my offer to McMaster I joined the Class of 2020 Facebook page. This page quickly became a large part of my personal social media intake as it became very active, with people introducing themselves and asking questions in anticipation of our first year.
The page was filled with excitement and happiness, however, the page died down after my first two semesters. Luckily as soon as that happened the Spotted at Mac page was on the rise and was an instant form of entertainment for me.
Spotted at Mac is home to a university version of Craigslist’s missed connections, where you can try to find the pretty girl you saw sitting outside of Starbucks in the student centre followed by a “coffee sometime?” request.
Spotted is also a place where you can share tips and tricks to make the most of your years at McMaster as well as to help with personal struggles among friends and family. The posts also allow students to connect with new people who have similar interest, or even those who are just looking for a pal.
For me, one of the most intriguing aspects of [Spotted at Mac] was that it is an initiative created by the students instead of by the university.
On a more serious note, this active Facebook page is a place where people go for advice about everything under the sun. In a more recent post on the page an individual asked for advice on how to help a close friend seemingly developing an eating disorder. When I looked at the comment section it consisted of nothing but supportive advice and even invitations to message people privately for additional help. This is the sign of a great community, one in which the people have no obligation to help but choose to out of the goodness of their own hearts.
Many parts of the internet come with hate and negativity, concepts in which Spotted at Mac is free of for the most part. There is a fair share of complaints and upsetting personal stories too. However, if you are struggling in a class I’m sure someone else is too and that they have posted a meme for you to laugh at, even if it’s just for a second. Allowing you to forget about the 12-page paper you have due tomorrow.
For me, one of the most intriguing aspects of this Facebook page was that it is an initiative created by the students instead of by the university. This is another solid reflection of the McMaster students and our ability to create communities on our own accord, specifically a community free of judgement.
McMaster students are creating their own positive space where individuals can make friends and develop a support team from behind a computer screen. This is a place where no one has to go through anything alone and everyone can engage. Spotted is a page created by students for students that allows everyone to be a part of a community with little to no rules but to simply be kind.
Film awards have been, and probably always will be, rooted in Hollywood politics. From snubs to last-minute bidding, it seems as though the merit of individual films are often overlooked in favour of marketability.
The 2015 Oscar nominations were recently announced and have resulted in many discussions about race relations in Hollywood. Not only were the acting categories all white, many have begun to examine why certain films were absent from the Best Director categories.
Intersectionality is always important, but when examining the lack of Best Director nominations for Selma, a film portraying the Martin Luther King Selma march, intersectionality is of the utmost importance. Ava DuVernay was the first black female to be nominated for Best Director in the Golden Globes’ 77-year tenure.
Despite having a 99 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, higher than the critically acclaimed and widely-nominated Boyhood, the film was glaringly absent from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Producers Guild of America Awards, Directors Guild of America Awards, and Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations, and was snubbed in the Best Director category for the Academy Awards.
Only four women have ever been nominated in the Best Director category, while only one, Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker has won. Comparatively, only three Black men have ever been nominated for Best Director in the Academy Awards 87-year history. Had Ava DuVernay found her way into the category, she would have been the first Black female to ever have a place in the category.
In popular culture, movies and television often reinforce values commonly held in society and overlooking talented black women should remind us that sexism and racism, especially in Hollywood, are still highly prevalent. In 2014, 17 of the 250 top selling films were directed by women, and three of those were Black female directors.
In a 2012 survey, the L.A. Times found that 94 percent of Oscar voters are white, and 77 percent are male. How can Black women expect fairness when their voices are overwhelmingly absent from the voting process? While it is important to note that Selma received nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Song (“Glory” by Common and John Legend), we do a disservice by admitting that “at least we have those.” It is not a matter of charity, and it’s not enough to get crumbs; it should be about fairness.
No, Selma would not have won every award category it was nominated in, but that does not mean that we should overlook the lack of nominations. Black women have continued to prove that they are talented enough and it is time that we, and the film industry, recognized this.
Last November, President Patrick Deane sat down with MSU President Teddy Saull to discuss the university’s role in international affairs and to promote the launch of a series of lectures and seminars entitled “Perspectives on Peace.”
They contemplated the role of the university in providing an academic platform to discuss national and international conflicts. In the video, Deane states that, “the university can’t just be passive.”
During the South African apartheid, Deane attended a university in Johannesburg known for its anti-apartheid activism. While Deane rarely mentions his experiences from the apartheid era in his McMaster speeches, in an interview with the Hamilton Spectator last spring he acknowledged the privileges afforded to him by an unfair system, and his view that a university has a responsibility to stand up for “values that are desirable in society and human activity.”
Despite his experiences and his attempts to encourage socially conscious dialogue at McMaster, this was still a refreshing and slightly unexpected sentiment to hear from our administration.
Too often, it is argued that universities and bodies within them should not be political places. While I agree, as I assume most people would, that university administrations should remain neutral and non-partisan during elections, universities and student unions should not be neutral on political events that impact our lives as citizens of Canada and the global community.
Taking a political stance doesn’t mean adopting a position that fits the agenda of a political party. It means making a statement about what is in the interest of a just, democratic, and sustainable society.
Universities are places of research, where the complexities of human life, societies, and the environment are studied and evaluated. A university has at its disposal educated people, with the tools to seek the truth and relay it to the public. Although research rarely points the way in black-and-white, it furthers human understanding of our own world – local, national or global.
Apart from the wealth of knowledge in our institutions, the structure and context of a university is inherently political. Political in the sense that who gets to be here, sit in our classes, is largely defined by socio-economic factors. There was a time when our university only accepted men – the inclusion, and struggle for the inclusion, of women was a political act. We see within our own walls the manifestation of class and income inequality issues. Universities are also a complex ground of labour issues – from research and teaching assistants to sessional faculty and custodial staff.
Given the university’s place in our cities and societies, it is important that its role as a place of progressive, educated thought is not left behind. We should not aim to create complacent and non-political student bodies and academic faculties. Student unions should continue (and in some cases, start) taking strong stances on fossil fuel divestment, climate change, income inequality, and other forms of inequality.
Our student union has a policy of mostly research-based advocacy. Every school term, they get together with other universities who belong to the Ontario Universities Student Alliance to draft policy papers on higher-education issues. While there have been major advancements through these methods, other methods shouldn’t be dismissed as futile modes of resistance.
For example, when Ryerson’s student union held a disruptive protest during a Ministry of Training and Colleges speech, media columnists and post-secondary education leaders largely condemned them. Many did not see what the “point” of such a tactic that had no clear policy outcomes was. They failed to recognize the courage to speak out against institutional decisions, or the attention it brought to unfair increases in tuition and the financial inaccessibility of education it creates.
Student bodies shouldn’t rely only on disruptive tactics, and sit-ins are probably not going to solve the lack of funding for mental health support, or the lack of financial aid. But they can send a message. They can bring people together for a shared goal.
Our student unions need both policy-based and action-based activism. And we shouldn’t be afraid to be “too” political. We have a role to play in pointing out the injustices and inadequacies of our social systems and norms. We should be speaking out against poverty at the national level, as well as our own campus.
Universities are political in every aspect of their existence. There is no point in pretending they aren’t, and it certainly won’t lead us towards progress. We have to use the full range of tools and opportunities provided to us to act on our social responsibility as an institution and stand up for those who are voiceless, whose struggles we study and dissect, and for ourselves.
In the age of the internet, there has never been more access to music in all of history. More importantly, there has never been more music being created and recorded than what we have seen in the last ten years. Thanks to the advent of home studio and computer-based digital audio work stations, creating a quality recording of your work has never been easier. Musicians no longer have to rely on major labels to make what they love, resulting in music for the masses.
So why is it that when I sift through my Facebook news feed I hear the same broken record echoing that “the music industry is dead,” when my iTunes library seems to grow bigger every year? I’m talking about those kids who won’t shut up about how the only good music was made in the 70s, or that old-school hip-hop is the be-all and end-all of quality rap music. How can someone complain about music being dead when every conceivable sound is being created and recorded around the world? Do you really want to go back to a system where you were only able to listen to the handful of bands that could afford the thousands of dollars it costs to go to a recording studio 30 years ago?
I can already imagine your counter-argument. Yes, I know that people have their own preferences and tastes, and some people might just like a different style, but too often the people complaining describe music as a hugely important thing in their life. If you don’t care about music and just want to listen to a few of your favourite tracks, that’s fine, but if you love music the style you love is very likely still being created, and you just don’t know about it because you’re too busy mourning the loss of Pink Floyd despite only knowing “Money” and “Wish You Were Here.”
Instead of complaining about Nirvana being the last best west of rock, start looking for the hundreds of bands that still want to create music that way. Instead of whining about Wu-Tang-Clan why not look into the rap artists who love them, and are channelling their style to this day. There is almost a zero percent chance that someone right now in this world with billions of people that someone isn’t making great music just like the artists you love. You just have to find it.
Is it that hard to imagine that there are people just like you, who want to create music that channels your favourite time period? If you love classic rock, check out Tame Impala, The Black Keys or The Sheepdogs. If you miss old-school rap, check out Joey Bada$$ or Kendrick Lamar. To borrow classic relationship advice, there are other fish in the sea, and those fish probably play your favourite music. Sure, these artists aren’t going to be identical carbon copies of the older generation, but there is far more to music than what you hear on the radio. Are you really so dull that you have already given up on finding new stuff in your 20s?
At the end of the day, those complaining about rock or hip-hop being dead need to admit to themselves that they are either too lazy to look for something new to listen to, or just looking for something to complain about. I’m grateful for the music of the past, and excited for the music of the future. If music is really important to you, maybe you should be too.
On Sept. 26, Thom Yorke – frontman for Radiohead – released his new album Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes. Unlike with his previous work, Yorke opted to release the record using BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing service.
“If it works well it could be an effective way of handing some control of internet commerce back to people who are creating the work,” Yorke said in an interview with NME. The album costs $6.
While the idea of “bypassing the self-elected gatekeepers” of the music industry seems noble, Yorke appears to be attempting to catch up to the bandwagon of unconventional music releases that have become increasingly common over the last decade.
In 1999, Blur’s Damon Albarn began to work with visual artist Jamie Hewlett. They created Gorillaz, a fictional band that produced real music. The duo created a world for the “band” and with the help of an ever-changing group of collaborators, released four full-length albums that crossed multiple genres, from pop, to trip hop, to dub. The band has also appeared at festivals and gone on tour, sometimes with holographic projections of the fictional members, and other times with the “real world” collaborators. Over their 15-year career, Gorillaz has challenged our perceptions of both genre and how music is made.
Similarly, in 2012, Beck came out with Song Reader, an album only available as sheet music. Beck’s goal with Song Reader was to encourage people to create their own versions of his songs. The corners of every sheet of music are covered in bonus notes and fragments of other melodies, paying homage to sheet music from the days before radio, when the majority of pop music had to be accessible to amateur musicians. With Song Reader, Beck produced an artifact that is both a throwback to times gone by and a door to the future of music.
Now throw Modern Boxes into the mix. Creating a pay gate to download the album from a service most people use to obtain files for free is counterintuitive, making Yorke look out of touch. Moreover, he cannot claim to have pioneered the BitTorrent release, as Hundred Waters and Willis Earl Beal have both gone this route.
Music has been available online for years now, in both paid for and pirated venues, and while his intentions may have been revolutionary, Thom Yorke’s album is not. Yes, there should be a better way to encourage people to pay for music digitally, but his method is not the answer.
If you’re a casual soccer fan like myself, you may have encountered this person over the past three weeks:
“If you only tune in for the World Cup, you’re not a real futbol fan.”
Invariably, I hope your response was to ignore, and move on. There’s not much to do if someone thinks they hold dominion over fandom. It’s a silly thought.
It’s true that casual fans, like myself, only tune into soccer for the World Cup. More to the point, we come out of the woodwork in droves donning expensive, hastily purchased jerseys. We pack pubs to the brim and parrot common rhetoric. The handful of players whose name we recognize - the Wayne Rooney’s and Landon Donovan’s of EA sports fame - become gods in our eyes.
I can see how that could be annoying to a hardcore fan. We dilute the conversation at the bar. No real fan turns to another and asks, “what’s an offside trap?” Throughout the year, soccer fandom is a cozy house gathering. The World Cup, by that analogy, is a free kegger - everyone is really drunk and no one knows anyone.
The World Cup will always attract a global audience, and that includes us rubberneckers. If you’re a diehard, you’ll just have to accept that. It’s the same with any other great sporting spectacle, be it hockey, basketball, football, baseball - if it draws a crowd, we’ll tune in.
We’ll watch because professional sports is entertainment that doubles as social currency. The point of it is to be entertained. And hopefully, be enjoyed with company. If people are talking about it, we want to join the conversation. We might not be entirely interested in the chatter itself, but we’re very interested in chatting. It’s a way to connect and escape loneliness.
That’s the real value of pro sports - it’s a distraction. It’s a campfire at which people of similar interests can convene. A like-colored shirt can band otherwise strangers as brothers, if only for a game. It has the power to bridge the sometimes tenuous gap between father and son. Why do you think it’s branded as a religion?
To that point, the World Cup is the Mecca of sports. There’s nothing else like it. Fans in the streets. Pints are consumed. Flags of every color hang proudly from the hoods of cars. An abrasive whirr of vuvuzelas and car horns permanently underscores the sound of a city..
Don’t let anyone take that away from you. Enjoy the finals and cheer to your heart’s content, even if you barely know what’s going on.
Amanda Watkins
LifeStyle Editor
For most of the year, I’m pretty content with the fact that I can’t grow facial hair.
And then November rolls around.
Movember. It’s a term we’ve all come to know and anticipate as it marks the one time of year when a bearded man stands for personal health and awareness.
With a small-scale start in 2003, a group of “Mo Bros” in Melbourne, Australia decided to grow out their facial hair to spread the word about men’s health. Now coined as Movember, a clever portmanteau of Moustache and November, what was once a small Aussie event is now an international campaign devoted to raising funds and awareness for prostate cancer research.
In 2012, the campaign officially included 29 participating countries, with over one million registered participants through their online charitable network.
The campaign is widely popular across the Hamilton and McMaster communities especially with the “McMO’sters” network that has been active and running for the last two years. Participating students are encouraged to officially register online and join the pre-existing McMaster team.
Now let’s get back to me growing facial hair.
As much as the event directly caters to the abilities of men on campus, female students are also encouraged to join in on the fun by raising money on behalf of a specific person or team taking part in the facial hair festivities.
And although taking part in Movember as a woman is equally as beneficial to the cause, it just isn’t as fun.
There are several campaigns that revolve around female-oriented causes, but none seem to have the gender pride pull that Movember offers to its gentleman participants. Although worthy commitments and campaigns, none seem to offer the same overt publicity and gimmicky excitement that bring together men during Movember.
I appreciate the work that all charitable organizations put forward with their campaigns, but wearing a somewhat sexualized “I love boobies” bracelet just isn’t the same as bonding with my “Mo Bros” over a natural facial buy cheap generic viagra accessory.
I’m a little jealous that men have the opportunity to so openly show something that unites their gender, while women have to hide any explicit features that define their femininity.
In an attempt to find a campaign that could have the same thrilling and hairy effects of Movember, Armpits for August was started up in the UK as a way to raise money and awareness for Polycystic Ovary Syndrome research. Similarly, the “No Shave November” idea promotes similar trends for women while supporting a variety of charities. Although both of these events were built on the same principle as Movember, the event isn’t as well received or popular due to the stigma around female body hair.
Although Movember supports a great cause and has earned a well-deserved amount of support and praise, I really wish there was a way for women to support their gender in a fun and inclusive way.
This November, I’ll sport the endearing title of a “Mo Sista” to support those growing for the cause. And to be honest, I will probably be unknowingly taking part in No Shave November. Girls may not be having as much fun, but at least we’re growing in the right direction.
Opinions Editor Sam Godfrey asks students what they're doing over the fall break, new this cheap canadian viagra year.
