Photo by Cindy Cui / Photo Editor

Historically, McMaster Students Union presidential candidates often have big dreams to tackle issues concerning marginalized communities. Topics that reappear every year include accessibility, reducing financial barriers and sexual violence support. While these platform points can be well-intentioned, they can often be examples of poor allyship instead. Using people of colour, the 2SLGBTQ+ community, disabled people and survivors as talking points for campaigning can be insensitive if candidates are unable to follow through with their platform points.

There are clear examples of platforms that have done this. In 2018, past MSU president Ikram Farah campaigned on reducing financial barriers by re-evaluating the Ontario Student Assistance Program’s structure and reworking it to accurately reflect tuition cost discrepancies between different programs. This would mean that two students who paid different tuition amounts, and who previously qualified for the same amount of financial aid, would instead receive aid that was proportional to their costs. Although Farah completed her presidential term in April 2019, any advocacy done surrounding OSAP hasn’t had a huge impact on OSAP’s structure.

In 2019, current MSU president Josh Marando promised to hire an additional sexual violence response coordinator to address the lack of support for survivors of sexual violence. Marando still has three months left in his term, but the efforts into hiring a new sexual violence response coordinator seem to be lacking. So far, an additional sexual violence response coordinator has yet to be hired.

In addition to an absence of follow-through, candidates also often fail to consult adequately. This year, MSU presidential candidate Krystina Koc aimed to address student safety due to the Westdale and Thorndale break-ins that occurred last year, and to increase support to Maccess. However, Koc’s consultations about student safety were limited and she failed to consult Maccess regarding how to best improve support.

Incoming MSU President Giancarlo Da-Ré’s plans to improve accessibility by making the MSU website compliant with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act and increasing the number of courses that use Echo360 to record lectures. He also wants to implement consent culture modules that would be mandatory for welcome week representatives. Although Da-Ré states he has done 100 consultations and has platform points surrounding accessibility and consent, he did not consult Maccess or the Women and Gender Equity Network prior to campaigning.

Evidently, solidarity with low-income students, people of colour, survivors and disabled people have been a large topic of discussion within presidential platforms. However, these campaign points are rarely acted upon or are executed poorly. This leaves me and many others with questions: if these points don’t result in any visible change, why have them in your platform at all?

During campaign season, presidential candidates are trying to win students’ votes. Therefore, it’s usually important to maintain a good public image. Nothing looks better than advocating for a marginalized population. Regardless of whether these candidates actually care for the marginalized populations they’re advocating for, if they’re coming from a place of privilege and put us into their platforms, it can seem like they’re trying to win brownie points for being good people.

Additionally, this allyship quickly becomes performative if the candidates don’t follow through when it comes to supporting marginalized communities — which they often don’t. Even if you have the best intentions to help others, it is hard to change systemic oppression in a one-year term because these structures have been in place for centuries.

Typically, advocacy movements are initiated by marginalized communities themselves, not presidents. This can be seen with the WGEN, which was created to provide a safe space for women and trans people, as well as students that face sexual violence. WGEN was approved by the Student Representative Assembly because of a community survey that provided statistics of students who faced assaults, misogyny and sexism on campus. Although the SRA did come into play with the creation of this service, consultations and surveys were important in its creation, which is what the presidential candidates have been failing to do. In addition, WGEN was spearheaded by women, trans people and survivors advocating for its existence, proving that marginalized communities have always been at the forefront of these movements — not the MSU president. If the MSU president is serious about advocating for marginalized communities, then they need to consult with the groups who represent the needs of these students.

Despite Koc and Da-Ré’s well-intentioned platforms for improving peer support services and consent education respectively, they failed to consult the communities that are directly affected: Maccess and WGEN. How will you help improve support and remove systemic barriers if you do not talk to those that are directly affected?

Becoming the MSU president doesn’t mean that you suddenly have the ability to support marginalized people. Anyone and everyone can support movements to dismantle oppressive barriers — instead of campaigning on the idea that you will support marginalized people during your presidential term, start by supporting them in your everyday lives. Talk to the people you know and ask them how you can support them. Actually consult the marginalized communities you hope to support, not the institutions that oppress us. Even if you can’t make a huge change during your one-year term, you can still make meaningful change through your individual actions as a person. But if you’re not willing to commit to your platform and actually support marginalized students, please leave us out of it.

 

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Graphic C/O Ember

By: Ember, Contributor

I have previously written about how institutional ableism affects me and other students, but there’s another topic that is also overdue for discussion: casual ableism.

There are things that myself and other physically disabled people face on a consistent basis that an able-bodied person may not even realize are ableist. Using elevators, ramps and public transport, as well as navigating the campus in general — these activities are imperative to my everyday life, but are also an absolute nightmare.

The McMaster University Student Centre is home to many student services and it also acts as one of the main social hubs on campus, so it makes sense that it is very busy. I’m involved with and use multiple McMaster Students Union services within MUSC which span multiple floors of the building. I have lost count of how many times during those between-class rushes as well as during lunch hours that I have been bumped into, almost knocked over or completely plowed past by students and staff alike when walking to the elevators or using the ramp.

My cane is purple, it is loud, and it is very unlikely that able-bodied folks cannot hear it. I know you can see me — it is hard not to. My disability does not afford me the luxury to be subtle and small, so when you push past me, you’re making it clear that you have chosen to ignore my existence for your convenience. Is getting to your destination a few seconds earlier really worth disregarding basic human decency for myself and other physically disabled people?

Speaking of elevators, stop pressing the button and then walking away to take the stairs when it takes too long for the elevator to arrive. The reason why it is taking so long is because there are people on every other floor doing the exact same thing, and when I finally get on the elevator, it stops at every single floor. Somehow going from the first floor to the second floor of MUSC suddenly takes five minutes instead of 30 seconds. If you can take the stairs, just take the stairs — what have you gained by attempting to use and delaying accommodating utilities?

A side note: pressing the button for the elevator only to have it filled with able-bodied people who refuse to make room — all bearing sheepish or indifferent looks on their faces — is humiliating and degrading. The selfishness and misplaced entitlement to disability resources and accommodations make it that much harder for disabled people to exist and get around in public spaces.

Now let’s talk about public transit. Fellow students, I know that you love taking the bus for a couple of stops from inside campus into Westdale Village, but when you push past me to get on the bus when the bus driver specifically stops right in front of me to let me on first, know that I see you. When you fill up priority seating, placing down your bags or groceries beside you on another seat, I see you. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I end up standing on a crowded eastbound bus.

Not only do I feel pain, but I feel ashamed and dehumanized when able-bodied students see my physical form but refuse to acknowledge my need for accommodations. It wears me down and weighs on me day after day — my disability is hypervisible as I cannot hide it, but able-bodied people choose to not perceive me and my presence in order to absolve them of their guilt and responsibility for their actions.

Just because you hold the door open for me or press the automatic door button once does not mean you are at the apex of disability allyship. Check yourself, reflect on your actions, and deconstruct your saviour complex. You are not as perfect as you think you are.

 

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Photo by Matty Flader / Photo Reporter

By Mads Clement, Contributor

cw: mental health, suicide

In 2018, the Student Representative Assembly voted to rescind the Peer Support Line (PSL), an anonymous hotline that existed to support students and their mental health. 

PSL offered students a place to chat with another student trained in peer support about difficulties that they were experiencing. These challenges could range from relationship issues to academic problems. 

According to a former vice president (administration) of the McMaster Students Union, the main reason the PSL was rescinded was because it received too many “crisis calls”, which posed a liability to all parties involved. Given student staff were not trained in crisis management or how to address calls with students experiencing suicidal ideation, this is a reasonable concern. 

WGEN is a peer support and community building space on the second floor of the student centre.

However, closing a mental health-based service has had negative impacts on the student body. We have lost one more resource on our already very small list of mental health resources. Anonymous peer support is extremely valuable. These services can be accessed without the fear of your name being officially attached to your mental health issues and because peers can relate to you on levels that adult therapists often cannot. Having someone who can relate to you without worrying about whether you will be institutionalized is an important facet of mental health care.

For these reasons and many others, students were outraged by the closing of PSL. We took to Twitter and Facebook, asking for answers as to why such a valuable service would be rescinded. It’s hard to find mental health care on campus, and reducing our options makes it even harder. 

I actually received a reply from a member of the SRA to my outraged tweets where they wrote; “actually, there are 4 new counsellors that have been added to increase 4,000 hours of counselling to decrease the waiting time that students face when accessing the Student Wellness Centre.”

There are three main reasons why this resolution is an issue.

Problem number one: as mentioned above, going to a therapist is not the ideal option for everyone, as some students are likely to have minimal shared experiences with therapists. This especially applies to marginalized folks; patients of colour are less likely to find a racialized therapist that understands the impacts of systemic racism on their mental health. 2SLGBTQ+ students face a similar struggle when dealing with cisgender, heterosexual therapists. The same can be said of various other marginalized identities.

The second problem is that four more therapists isn’t enough. Ask anyone who goes to therapy at the SWC about how long they wait for appointments. In the majority of cases, there’s a two week to one month gap in between appointments. This is not adequate. On top of that, the therapists and counsellors are so swamped with students that they rarely have time to dedicate care to their patients beyond a surface level interaction. Mental health problems often run a lot deeper than what therapists are able to deal with because of their volume of patients.

Since there are many students floundering for mental health care outside of the SWC and PSL, more pressure has been put on the MSU peer support services: Women and Gender Equity Network, the Pride Community Centre, Student Health Education Centre and Maccess. These services, like PSL, are run by students who have entry level peer support training and are not compensated for their work. They are not equipped to handle the volume of students coming to them for help, let alone the degree of mental distress some of their space users are in. These students are not trained therapists.

Additionally, the majority of students that volunteer for these services are marginalized, which leads to the issue of marginalized students taking on all the mental health work on campus. These students, because of the pressures in their own lives and the added pressures of dealing with the mental health crises of others that they can’t always handle, often develop their own mental health problems and also need support or therapy. This system is unbalanced and unsustainable.

We need a balance of both therapists and peer support services. Therapists can provide specialized care to those who need it, but they are at capacity at McMaster University right now. We need more therapists; specifically therapists who have experiences with marginalization. It’s super weird talking about institutionalized transphobia with a cisgender, heterosexual person. This needs to change. 

In addition, the MSU peer support services need more funding and volunteers should be compensated for their work. They put hours of unpaid labour into an unforgiving system that does not support them.

McMaster needs to rework its mental health support systems, and it needs to do this as urgently as possible. Everyone suffers when mental health services are limited, not just mentally ill folks. 

 

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The Student Choice Initiative has placed many students in a difficult position. How much choice is there when students are forced to compromise supporting student services so that they can save money to mitigate the consequences of OSAP funding cuts and increased financial stress, or vice versa?

The answer is that there isn’t much choice, and unfortunately, it’s still one that students across Ontario will have to make.

The Silhouette has been deemed a non-essential service under the Ontario Government's Student Choice Initiative, putting our funding in jeopardy. As McMaster’s independent student newspaper, we have made a commitment to providing a platform for student voice, expression, criticism and celebration for 90 years.

As students make decisions about which fees to opt-out of, we ask that our McMaster community take into consideration the effects their choices will have on services.

 

Ontario government releases Student Choice Initiative guidelines

 

In the wake of the Student Choice Initiative

 

Vital services, campus activities at risk as Mac students choose what fees to pay | CBC News

The fate of many of McMaster University's clubs hangs in the balance over the next week as students decide whether to fund the clubs and other student activities. Student leaders say the process endangers important student services and could fundamentally change the nature of student life. From Sept.

Photos by Catherine Goce

By Areej Ali

McMaster students can now take breaks between classes at the nap space recently added to the third floor of the McMaster University Student Centre. The “Refresh Nap Lounge” launched during the first week of September and is currently available for student use.

The nap station project is being funded by the Student Life Enhancement Fund, an MSU-organized fund that students pay approximately $100,000 into annually. To determine what the money is allocated for each year, students are asked to submit project ideas aimed at improving student life on campus and vote on the ones they find most fashionable.

“A few years back, a nap room in MUSC was one of the top choices, so the money was given to the MUSC administration,” said Scott Robinson, McMaster Students Union vice president (Finance).

In 2016, MUSC was given $20,000 to create the space.  

Lori Diamond, MUSC administrative director, took the lead on the nap lounge project. Her team reported on their progress to both the student services committee, which consisted of both university and MSU staff, and the MUSC board of management. Ongoing promotion and maintenance will be taken care of by MUSC.

Despite the newness of the initiative, the MUSC administration team has been discussing the idea of providing students with napping options for a few years now.

“We looked at different options, including high-tech nap pods, and providing reclining chairs in existing lounges,” Diamond said. “Ultimately, the MUSC board of management wanted to ensure that we used the grant money effectively to benefit the students in a dedicated space.”

The brand new nap area sits in a space that was previously allocated towards “undefined general lounge space.” Diamond explains that the previously awkward configuration of the space made furniture placement difficult.

“It did, however, make a good space for a nap lounge,” said Diamond.  

The newly added nap lounge area includes seven hospital-grade, adjustable sleeper chairs and is enclosed by a clear glass wall.

Diamond excitedly affirms that McMaster students have been receptive to the new usage of the space thus far.

“The students who have found the Refresh Nap Lounge on the third floor of MUSC have been very receptive to and positive about the existence of the space,” said Diamond. “Anecdotally, the room is well-used whenever I pass by.”

More information can be found on the big screen located on the first floor of MUSC. A few rules for the nap room are highlighted below.

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