By: Steffi Arkilander
Content Warning: Contains mentions of sexual assault
McMaster University has a strong reputation among Ontario universities for offering a variety of diverse student-oriented resources and supports. However, McMaster has consistently failed in making support for sexual violence survivors accessible and effective.
On Aug. 19, I was sexually assaulted by someone I trusted, just a few weeks before I started my second year at McMaster. I decided to give university resources a chance and reached out to the sexual violence response coordinator, Meaghan Ross, in October.
I needed academic accommodations to support the extensive and difficult emotional turmoil I was experiencing. My grades were falling and I was not ready to write any tests. To receive academic accommodations, I had to use Ross in my letter for Student Accessibility Services, which meant disclosing my sexual assault to numerous administrative individuals.
Unfortunately, getting registered with SAS is a long process and often my deferred midterms fell on days where I had other assessments or midterms. As a result, instead of my work being manageably spread out, my work and emotional distress were compounded together.
In December, I decided to report my assault to the university. Not only was it unfair to me to have to constantly interact with my perpetrator, but it was also unfair to other students that had to interact with him. But when I contacted the McMaster Students Union and the Residence Life Office, I learned that undergoing the reporting processes is an extensive and exhausting endeavour.
The process forces you to disclose your story to multiple organizations, to staff and non-survivors and brings your sexual assault to the public forefront. Even if my perpetrator is removed from positions without contact from me, he will know I caused his removal and that I decided to take action. Moreover, people will be able to piece my story together. While I am personally okay with this, many others are not.
Thus, to receive accommodations,such as an apology or to remove him from a position, I took the informal route that is offered through the McMaster University sexual violence protocol. To my disappointment, this route requires survivors to detail the incident. This creates an incredibly re-traumatizing experience and gives your perpetrator access to your disclosure, allowing them to reject the requested accommodations.
This process has clearly become incredibly legal, despite pursuing the university route in order to avoid legal involvement. As this process is painfully slow, my perpetrator continues to hold positions of power and interact with the student body without consequence. My perpetrator is free to roam campus while I am forced to anxiously avoid him.
My story is not uncommon. In fact, in comparison to other survivors, the university has responded well. Students generally don’t report their sexual assaults because of the university’s response; the survivor often feels interrogated and is led to hope for an unsatisfactory compromise with their perpetrator.
Survivors need to be prioritized. MacLean’s nationwide survey found that 29 per cent of McMaster students were not educated on how to report a sexual assault and 24 per cent of students weren’t educated on McMaster’s services that support survivors. This needs to change.
The system should be more navigable and transparent, so that survivors are more likely to reach out for help. Reporting assaults needs to be standardized university-wide so that survivors do not need to recount their experience to multiple organizations.
Training does not teach perpetrators not to assault people. My perpetrator has attended over five trainings on anti-oppressive practices and sexual violence throughout university.
Instead, training needs to emphasize on supporting survivors, and tangible means by which we can all work to dismantle the barriers impeding support mechanisms. The fact that only three in 1000 assaults results in conviction only becomes horrifyingly real when you have to support a survivor or become one yourself.
Survivors have nothing to gain from reporting, only lots to lose. So please believe us.
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If you are on campus at all during Welcome Week, you might notice a wave of Welcome Week representatives out and about with flamingo patches on their suits. These patches symbolize the new Pride Representative Network at work, a pet project of Miranda Clayton, the McMaster Students Union Pride Community Centre coordinator.
“This year, when I took over the [PCC], we did this whole thing where we rebranded it, we completely overhauled it and how we conceptualize our LGBT community on campus,” she said.
If a representative has a flamingo patch on their suit, it means that they are knowledgeable about all the services and supports available to McMaster students. These representatives also serve as ambassadors for the PCC during Welcome Week, as they can offer information to any first-year students who may be interested in learning more.
According to Clayton, the LGBT community at McMaster has felt fractured for many years, partly due to the focus on cisgender, gay men in typically LGBT spaces.
“I started at Mac in 2011, and I've been a bisexual on this campus for about 8 years now… When I got here, and I knew the QSCC existed, but I didn't feel like it was a place I could go, because it was very much presented itself as a place if you are gay and only gay, which I'm not,” she said.
“I wasn't in that straight/gay binary that people seem to think exists, so I was like, "I guess this isn't a place I can go,” Clayton added. She also pointed to results from her survey, which illustrated that many students on campus felt they were not welcome at the PCC, whether they were trans, non binary, bisexual or lesbians.
“We are truly for everyone under the LGBT spectrum,” Clayton said.
As a part of her initial assessment of the service, Clayton sent out a community assessment survey for LGBT students to complete, and found that many LGBT students were either unfamiliar or unaware of the PCC’s existence.
Another issue plaguing the service, according to Clayton, is simply its location; unlike other MSU peer support spaces on campus, the PCC’s main space is in a part of the McMaster Student University Centre that does not receive a large amount of foot traffic.
Clayton hopes that the Pride Rep Network will alleviate some of that confusion by offering students information about LGBT spaces on campus the second they enter campus grounds.
At the time of writing, there are currently 192 representatives signed up to be a part of the Pride Rep Network, and Clayton only expects that number to grow as more representatives are given the chance to sign up. Both the PCC and other faculty societies will post about the initiative during Welcome Week to ensure students are aware of what the flamingo patches mean.
For another representative, supporting LGBT students comes at a crucial time, as they will be a social science representative and is one of the reps a part of the Pride Rep Network.
“When [the MSSS Welcome Week planner] reached out to us about this experience, that's when I researched roughly some of the communities, I looked up Miranda, and saw some of the movement and the story she was telling and I thought that was very compelling and I thought it was an important initiative that needs to be on campus,” they said.
As the summer winds down and campus is flooded once again, LGBT students attending McMaster can take solace in the flamingos that will quietly attending classes with them.
The latest research from organizations such as Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development, Council of Ontario Universities and the Canadian Federation of Students paint a grim picture for international student attending a postsecondary institution in Ontario. Despite the growing international student population, their tuition has risen at a remarkable rate — meant to make up for reductions in government grants.
At McMaster, this gap is just as obvious. A domestic, full-time student enrolling in a program such as life sciences will pay $7228.79 in tuition fees whereas an international student in the same program will pay $25,923.88. International students also do not have access to needs-based scholarships McMaster offers, though they do have access to an international student bursary.
Likewise, due to stipulations in their student visas, international students are limited to working 20 hours a week off-campus during the school year and can only take on internships and co-op placements if they are explicitly a part of their degree.
It is unfair to expect international students to foot the bill of our education when McMaster is a public university. These funds should be coming from the provincial government. Targeting a group that is expected to pay such a high fee and actively recruiting them over domestic students is unethical to all parties involved as it drains resources from one group while taking opportunity from another. High tuition costs also ensure we limit international students to only those of means, which can alienate students who may want to attend McMaster in order to flee hardships or prejudice in their home country.
In addition, it is clear that this money is not being re-invested into supporting international students who attend our universities. McMaster’s International Student Services office mainly focuses on helping students with immigration issues and offers some programming like a mentorship program and English classes. The “Student Life” section of their website mainly focuses on getting international students to explore Hamilton and informs them of popular Hamilton events such as Supercrawl. There is little evidence of support services on their website.
“Considering how many extra fees international students pay, it would only be fair to us that other support services were put in place to ensure that international students’ mental and physical health is being cared for,” said Paula Daidone, a McMaster alumna. Daidone was an international student of McMaster’s Communications Studies program, and is currently enrolled in the McMaster Communication Studies Masters’ program.
Under “Campus Support Services,” the three McMaster Student Union-run services listed are MSU Spark, the Queer Student Community Centre and Diversity Services. Spark focuses on first-year transition, the QSCC offers peer support and programming for LGBTQ students and Diversity Services focuses on creating an inclusive environment for students of colour and other marginalized groups.
While these three services are undeniably relevant to international students, why is Diversity Services, a service geared more towards advocacy and education rather than support, listed when services such as Peer Support Line, the Women and Gender Equity Network, Maccess and the Student Health Education Centre all have on-campus spaces equipped with peer-support volunteers? The page reads as though someone looked through the MSU services tab 10 years ago and picked the first three that sounded right.
Similarly, only two MSU clubs are listed: McMaster International and Exchange Club and McMaster Outdoors Club. This is particularly odd given how many cultural associations exist at McMaster that attract many international students who wish to connect with those from their home country.
While this is likely because the ISS wants international students to integrate into the community rather than only befriending other international students, it exemplifies how little they understand the immigration process and how being surrounded by people with the same lived experiences as you can aid in the immigration process.
The website’s focus is clear: recruitment, recruitment, recruitment. International students are expected to crawl through the pages and pages of services and clubs the student union has to offer despite many groups explicitly supporting them. I’d willingly wager that they have not updated most aspects of the Support section of their webpage since it was created.
If a student were to exclusively use the ISS’s website to integrate themselves into the McMaster and Hamilton community, they would struggle.
If McMaster as an institution is going to focus on international student recruitment, the very least they could do is ensure that the immigration process is as smooth as possible outside of the legal aspects. Immigrating to a new country alone is a difficult endeavor, as is adjusting to university. If proper support services outside of simply helping them get into the country and speaking English are implemented, McMaster will continue to be a disservice to the international students who pay for bills.
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Two thirds of the way through the school year, the last thing on many students’ minds is their living situation. Between midterms, final exams and group meetings, students, especially those in residence, begin to see their rooms as a place to get a few hours of sleep before racing through another day. Unfortunately, some residence rooms are dealing with new, unwanted roommates.
For the past few months, Whidden Hall, a residence in the North Quad of campus, has been contending with an outbreak of bedbugs. Once associated with squalor, bedbugs have become a common pest in recent years, with discoveries of their presence in hotels, movie theatres and on public transit.
For this reason, Kevin Beatty, McMaster’s Director of Housing and Conference Services, is reluctant to call the recent outbreak a problem. “We typically see bedbugs over the course of the year. It's not uncommon to see them. But what is uncommon in this situation is that there seems to be a bit of a flare-up,” he said. He added that while the current bout has been present in Whidden for a few months, the treatment plan was put in place fairly soon after. “We have a comprehensive bedbug response plan in residence,” he said.
According to Beatty, all Community Advisors in residence are trained in how to deal with the reporting of bedbugs. Within 24 hours of a report being issued, pest control is brought in. “If the pest control company has something called proof of pests, so an actual bedbug or some trace that it exists, then they would take the next steps which would be working with the students to execute the treatment plan.”
This treatment plan involves students washing their bed sheets, clothing and other personal effects in biodegradable plastic bags, which help heat the objects in the washing machine, a process that kills the bedbugs. Pest control also treats the room in question, and comes in 14 days later to re-treat it.
While the initial reaction to the discovery of bugs may be to move to a different location, Beatty explained that this is not an ideal procedure. He said that if students are not present in their environment, the bugs will remain inactive. “The other reason is that you don't want people to move because one of the challenging aspects of bedbugs is that they're distributed in social networks ... that's why we advise students not to go home and why we don't move them.”
At the time that spoke with Beatty, the flare-up was isolated in Whidden. Since then, reports suggest the issue has spread to Bates Residence in the University’s West Quad, but Beatty could not be reached for further comment.
“We typically see bedbugs over the course of the year ... But what is uncommon in this situation is that there seems to be a bit of a flare-up."
For his part, Beatty remains optimistic about the “flare-up” being taken care of quickly and without fanfare. “We're lucky that residence students are quick to identify which allows us to be quick to respond,” he said.
Photo Credit: Jon White/ Photo Editor
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Laura Sinclair
Silhouette Staff
The snowy, slippery and cold conditions were not enough to slow down rookie Madeleine McDonald and veteran Lindsay Carson at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships on March 24 in Bydgoszcz, Poland. The two members of the Marauders’ cross country and track team managed to bundle up and use their experience with the snow to their advantage on the weekend. McDonald finished in 47thplace overall in the junior women’s race, and Carson finished in 60th place overall in the senior women’s race.
The two accomplished runners, with the help of their coaches Rory Sneyd and Paula Schnurr, made the tough decision to sit out this year’s track season in order to give everything they had into these world cross country championships. This meant that they would potentially be sacrificing a CIS medal at the prestigious CIS track and field meet in Edmonton.
This was a strategic decision that was necessary, however, for both of the athletes to increase their mileage and to perform their best in Poland this past weekend.
For rookie Madeleine McDonald, missing the track season was a good move, especially because of her outstanding result on the weekend, where she finished within the top 50 in the world. She will have plenty of opportunities to pick up a CIS track medal in future years, especially due to her tremendous potential that can only go uphill from this season. She has proven her dominance this year by quite handily beating other runners that are much older than her in her first University cross country season, which ultimately led to her 13th place finish at the CIS cross country championships.
She managed to carry that momentum to the one track race that she competed in this season, where she got off to a lead early in the 3000m and expanded that lead in the duration of the distance, winning the race by close to 20 seconds. She was the second Canadian to cross the finish line this past weekend, as she finished the 6km race in a time of 20:36, just two seconds behind teammate, rival and fellow rookie Madeleine Yungblut of the Guelph Gryphons. Together, they brought the Canadian team to a ninth place finish overall.
For veteran Lindsay Carson, missing out on the track season was not a huge loss either. She had already won the gold medal in the 3000m race at last year’s CIS championships in Winnipeg, and she also has several other CIS medals to her name. She could have easily won a gold medal repeat this year in the 3000m, but instead she decided to sacrifice another medal by competing among the best in the world.
She is not inexperienced when it comes to competing for Canada, however. She has worn the red and white singlet numerous times in her running career, and she has been a stand-out runner since the age of 14. Now, she is 23 years old, and despite being plagued with numerous injuries in the last couple of years, she has always managed to make a remarkable recovery and come back to the running scene better and more fit than ever.
She, too, proved her fitness at this meet, running the 8 km race in a time of 26:38, just three seconds behind one of her Canadian teammates, Rachel Hanna. The Canadian Senior Women’s team finished 8th overall.
Next on the schedule for the two accomplished athletes is a break before the training picks up for the outdoor track season, which gets underway in May. Carson will no longer be competing for McMaster, as her eligibility expires after this year. McDonald, however, still has four more years of running in maroon and grey, and her potential forecasts the possibility to compete for Canada again in future world championship meets.
In both the Senior and Junior women’s races at the World Cross Country Championships, the Kenyans won, while the USA team came fourth in the Senior women’s race and sixth in the Junior women’s race.
The two accomplished runners, with the help of their coaches Rory Sneyd and Paula Schnurr, made the tough decision to sit out this year’s track season in order to give everything they had into these world cross country championships. This meant that they would potentially be sacrificing a CIS medal at the prestigious CIS track and field meet in Edmonton.
This was a strategic decision that was necessary, however, for both of the athletes to increase their mileage and to perform their best in Poland this past weekend.
For rookie Madeleine McDonald, missing the track season was a good move, especially because of her outstanding result on the weekend, where she finished within the top 50 in the world. She will have plenty of opportunities to pick up a CIS track medal in future years, especially due to her tremendous potential that can only go uphill from this season. She has proven her dominance this year by quite handily beating other runners that are much older than her in her first University cross country season, which ultimately led to her 13th place finish at the CIS cross country championships.
She managed to carry that momentum to the one track race that she competed in this season, where she got off to a lead early in the 3000m and expanded that lead in the duration of the distance, winning the race by close to 20 seconds. She was the second Canadian to cross the finish line this past weekend, as she finished the 6km race in a time of 20:36, just two seconds behind teammate, rival and fellow rookie Madeleine Yungblut of the Guelph Gryphons. Together, they brought the Canadian team to a ninth place finish overall.
For veteran Lindsay Carson, missing out on the track season was not a huge loss either. She had already won the gold medal in the 3000m race at last year’s CIS championships in Winnipeg, and she also has several other CIS medals to her name. She could have easily won a gold medal repeat this year in the 3000m, but instead she decided to sacrifice another medal by competing among the best in the world.
She is not inexperienced when it comes to competing for Canada, however. She has worn the red and white singlet numerous times in her running career, and she has been a stand-out runner since the age of 14. Now, she is 23 years old, and despite being plagued with numerous injuries in the last couple of years, she has always managed to make a remarkable recovery and come back to the running scene better and more fit than ever.
She, too, proved her fitness at this meet, running the 8 km race in a time of 26:38, just three seconds behind one of her Canadian teammates, Rachel Hanna. The Canadian Senior Women’s team finished 8th overall.
Next on the schedule for the two accomplished athletes is a break before the training picks up for the outdoor track season, which gets underway in May. Carson will no longer be competing for McMaster, as her eligibility expires after this year. McDonald, however, still has four more years of running in maroon and grey, and her potential forecasts the possibility to compete for Canada again in future world championship meets.
In both the Senior and Junior women’s races at the World Cross Country Championships, the Kenyans won, while the USA team came fourth in the Senior women’s race and sixth in the Junior women’s race.
Scott Hastie
Assistant Sports Editor
Over the past week, the McMaster Marauders curling team took a trip to Thompson Rivers University to compete against the best colleges and universities in the nation. After finishing with a silver medal at the OUA championships, McMaster qualified for the CIS/CCAA tournament and put together a respectable result.
Despite the curling team being in their sophomore season of competition, Mac finished 3-4 in national pool play – good enough for the fourth overall finish and highest result from an OUA team.
In their first match, Mac took on the silver medalist Alberta Pandas and narrowly lost with a 9-8 score. The young bunch rebounded quickly, though, defeating the host Thompson Rivers WolfPack in a 6-1 rout.
The Maroon and Grey’s third game saw the see-saw trend begin, as Mac ran into the gold-medal Manitoba Bisons. The CIS/CCAA champions bested Mac in a heated battle, with the Bisons winning 10-8 in the tenth end.
Similar to the previous day of competition, the Marauders handled their next opponent of the day. The University of Prince Edward Island Panthers dug themselves a 6-1 hole before storming back. Mac weathered the comeback attempt and ended Day Two of the tournament with a 7-6 victory.
Day Three saw the highlight of the young program as the Marauders defeated the OUA champion Western Mustangs. It only took McMaster seven ends to dethrone their rivals and earn revenge from the OUA championship loss from a few weeks prior. With one game left, Mac stood with a 3-2 record.
However, the Marauders would find themselves on the wrong side of revenge in their match against the Guelph Gryphons. Mac handled the Gryphons in the OUA semifinals, but the Gryphons had the last laugh after taking a quick start in the national game to send the Marauders back to a .500 mark.
The tournament came to a bitter close as the Saint Mary’s Huskies beat the Maroon and Grey in a one point nail-biter. It took ten ends, but the AUS representative proved victorious.
Although McMaster narrowly missed out on grabbing some hardware for the trophy case in the David Braley Athletic Centre, the sky is the limit for Mac’s curling team.
Maggie Cogger-Orr
Silhouette Staff
In a rivalry that will get any McMaster student’s blood boiling, the Western Mustangs rolled into town Wednesday night, up against a Marauder team coming off two frustrating losses.
Fortunately for those fans, the Marauders were able to take out some of that frustration on the Mustangs and rolled to a 77-63 win Wednesday night at the Burridge Gym.
McMaster looked eager to get back to their winning ways, coming out with an 11-3 lead early. Western would battle back though to bring the maroon lead to three, before Hailey Milligan hit a buzzer beater to make in 19-14 McMaster at the end of the first quarter.
McMaster’s strength would lie in their ability to move the ball around the perimeter, but they at times struggled to rebound offensively under the basket. Western would capitalize on these defensive rebounds and quickly move the ball down court and drive to the basket. These quick transitions seemed to overwhelm the Marauders and saw the Mustangs take the lead 23-21.
It was then that Taylor Chiarot would take matters into her own hands, hitting four consecutive shots (a three, two field goals and a foul shot) for 8 points to swing Marauders back into the lead 29-23.
The second quarter would see both teams struggle with fouls, as offensive calls stalled the Marauders’ momentum, and Western would reach the team limit of five fouls with several minutes remaining in the half. Both teams shot an impressive 85.7% from the free throw line, and McMaster would head into the change room up 37-33.
The second half would open with open with some good ball movement by McMaster and seem them extend their lead to ten points with five minutes left in the third quarter. The teams would trade field goals back and forth, but Western could not close the gap and Mac would finish the fourth up by 11.
The Marauders would be too much for the Mustangs to handle in the fourth, as the ladies in purple looked tired and could not keep up. This, along with the Marauders shooting 54.5 per cent from three-point range, would lead to McMaster pulling away over the course of the quarter, with leads of as much as 21 points.
McMaster had a well-balanced offensive showing on the day as Chiarot had 22 points, Milligan had a huge double-double with 18 points and 16 rebounds, and Liz Burns chipped in with 17 points of her own. For her efforts, Burns would grab Player of the Game honours for Mac.
The victory puts McMaster back over .500 with a record of 10-9, leading into the final stretch of the regular season with three games remaining. The first of those three sees them take on the Guelph Gryphons at the Mitchell Athletic Centre on Feb. 11, a team who they held off to beat 66-63 a few weeks ago.
When asked what they needed to do heading into the last few weeks of their season, Burns indicated that her team would look to build on the strengths shown in their home victory.
“We have to keep rolling with this momentum, keep on playing to our strengths: fast breaks, getting the ball to our posts,” said Burns. “Today was a great game, our perimeter game was really strong, we had so many players
putting up points for us -- it was definitely a big team win.”
The 10 days will be make or break for the Marauders as they look finish their season off on a winning note heading into the post season. The finish off their season with a home game against Laurier on Feb. 18.
Brian Decker
Executive Editor
Perhaps no team would be more suited to play in an overtime shootout for the Vanier Cup than the McMaster Marauders.
Armed with an MVP wide receiver, an All-Canadian field goal kicker, a talented group of slotbacks, a powerful running back and a quarterback who had permanently entered Beast Mode, the Marauders had a bevy of weapons to march 35 yards into the end zone more times than their opponent could match.
That, and a diverse playbook devised by a man many have described as a football genius behind the scenes.
Observers of this year’s Mac team will no doubt be familiar with offensive coordinator Jon Behie’s arsenal of jet sweeps, behind-the-back handoffs and other tricky plays that have led many to herald the former player as an offensive mastermind.
Behie, a man who considers himself a Marauder lifer and a “McMaster football historian,” credits the skills of his players for the offence’s success rather than his own creativity and influence. But with aerial precision demonstrated by Kyle Quinlan and co. last Friday, it’s clear Behie’s fingerprints are all over the blueprint Mac used to cause utter destruction to the vaunted Laval defence.
The Marauders threw for 496 yards and gained nearly 700 for the game, moving the ball against Laval seemingly more successfully than any team this decade. The variation in playcalling, especially with Quinlan’s powerful arm,
“The pass game has always been my thing. Moving guys around, it’s like a chess match. It’s been fun to draw it up.
Since the turn of the century, Behie has been heavily involved in McMaster football, first as a recruit and fan, then as a quarterback and receiver and now as the offensive coordinator of the most potent offence in the CIS this year.
“I went to every game starting in 2000. This is the only place I applied and I wanted to be here,” says Behie. “I immersed myself in it and I just haven’t left.”
The Burlington native says his passion for offensive innovation has been around since the first time he ever picked up a football, and that he always had an eye on helping to direct a team.
“I remember drawing up plays and talking with coaches in high school,” says Behie. “I’ve wanted to coach for as long as I can remember, and I can remember in my first, second and third year wanting to get into coaching and teaching.
“It was kind of ‘right place, right time’ and the circumstances were lucky that they are what they are here at Mac.”
Behie says playing quarterback and receiver from 2002 to 2006 for McMaster helped foster his creativity for the passing game, something that has flourished with Quinlan, Mike DiCroce and the other talented players in the receiving corps making plays.
“The pass game has always been my thing. Moving guys around, it’s like a chess match. It’s been fun to draw it up.”
Behie is right to send credit for the Vanier win towards Quinlan, whose astonishing performance led him to call his the fourth-year pivot the best to ever play for McMaster.
“What he did was unbelievable. He couldn’t have done anything more; statistically; ‘wow’ factor; winning. It was all there.”
But his own brand of creative offence and his dedication to the team’s development has also been an integral part of McMaster’s rise to becoming the king of Canadian university football.
“It’s always about the program. It’s never been about one year’s team. And that’s why I do this every day and care so deeply about it,” says Behie.
Four days after the victory over Laval, the Vanier Cup sat in Behie’s office, but the drive to win another one was clearly already on his mind. He was heading off with head coach Stefan Ptaszek to scout recruits at the Metro Bowl in Toronto.
For Behie, the process of accomplishing what the Marauders did in 2011 again in 2012 is already underway.
“We’ll do everything we can to try to get another another Yates, another Uteck and another Vanier,” he says. “Hopefully we don’t have to wait 47 years 
Ben Orr
Sports Editor
Consistency continues to be elusive for the McMaster women in the early stages of their OUA season.
The Marauders played to yet another weekend split, losing to Queen's on Nov. 25 before rebounding against RMC the next night.
They continue to stay glued to a .500 record at 3-3, good enough for six points and fourth place in the OUA West division. However, with division leaders Brock sprinting out to a 6-0 record, the Maroon and Grey will need to find their rhythm soon if they wish to compete for a division crown.
Mac began the weekend against the Queen's Gaels, who came into the game with a 3-1 record and a whole lot of offensive firepower. The Gaels dominated early, scoring 29 points in the first quarter alone. They would take a 49-29 lead into half thanks in part to their effective 58 per cent shooting from the field.
The second half would see much of the same, as the Marauders struggled to get anything going against a stingy Queen's defence. Shooting an impressive 63 per cent from three-point land, the Gaels would cruise to a 94-65 win. McMaster coach Theresa Burns was not thrilled with her team's effort.
“We just mentally weren't there from the start. We let them get very comfortable, and they just took off and we couldn't reel it in.”
Against the Paladins, the Marauders came out flat again, falling behind 16-13 early. McMaster appeared to be shell-shocked, as the deficit increased to 31-24 by halftime.
The second half, however, was the Taylor Chariot show. The fifth-year senior and team captain would take charge, leading her team back to the lead in the third quarter. The nail was hammered into the coffin as the Marauders outscored the Paladins 20-8 in the fourth quarter, taking the game by a final score of 61-48.
Chariot would go on to score a game-high 27 points, adding eight rebounds for good measure. Isabel Ormond was also effective for her team, finishing two boards and a basket away from a double-double.
“It was pretty disappointing. Not what we were looking for out of the weekend,” said Burns sum up the road trip.
“Against RMC I thought our first half was not a great effort either, so we definitely looking for a better effort right from tip off in any of the games we play and hopefully we have that this weekend, because we've got two tough games coming up.”
The Marauders will host the Toronto Varsity Blues and the Ryerson Rams at Burridge Gym. Burns knows something will have to change to collect four points this weekend.
“We're not playing consistently, we're not putting a 40 minute game together, we're not putting two back-to-back good games together,” said the Mac bench boss.
“Not to make excuses but we still haven't had a full lineup out on the floor yet, we've had various people in and out of the lineup with injuries. I think we're got such a young lineup that when you take that experience out there's just not enough experience at this level to be able to put that consistent play together.”
Still, the coach praised the efforts of Chariot, who carried her team on her back in Kingston.
“Against RMC I don't think Taylor had a great start for what she's capable of doing. At half time we regrouped the whole team and I think she realized she had to step up. On any given night she can take over a game when she wants to. That's what she's capable of doing.” 
