Author: Ian Down

Construction delays, rent increases to come despite $18 million in investments

 

After undergoing some financial turbulence earlier this year, the Concordia Student Union’s (CSU) Woodnote Housing Project has secured all of its funding.

In a Nov. 13 press release, the CSU announced that new investments—including an additional $1.1 million from the City of Montreal last month—allowed the project to meet its $18 million budget.

The organization spearheading the project, Unité de travail pour l’implantation de logement étudiant (UTILE), has also reached a deal with a private construction contractor, although the release did not provide a name.

“I can officially say that the project survived a 30 per cent budget increase over the summer,” said Laurent Levesque, UTILE’s general coordinator, at the CSU’s regular council meeting on Nov. 14.

The Concordian previously reported that, over the past year, UTILE had to increase the project’s budget from $14 million to $18 million due to the rising cost of construction in the city, among other factors.

“Ever since the beginning, when we sat down with the CSU execs to discuss about strategies moving forward, our objective was to find a way to resolve this without adding any CSU money to the project, which is something we accomplished,” said Levesque. The CSU has contributed $1.85 million to the project. This funding comes from the union’s Student Space, Accessible Education and Legal Contingency (SSAELC) fund.

Levesque told the CSU the new investments are “a mix of extra grants and extra loans,” from UTILE’s investors. This includes additional grants of $1 million each from the Caisse d’économie solidaire Desjardins and the Fond d’investissement pour logement étudiant.

Despite these investments, the project will not meet its projected deadline. “We are in November now and it’s too cold, so it’s not possible to do the foundations right away,” said Levesque. Because of this, construction will not be completed by July 2019 as originally planned. The press release states that the residence, located on Papineau Ave. across from Parc Lafontaine, will open sometime in 2020.

Levesque said that rent for the residence will also have to be increased to accommodate the new investments. He said this 10 per cent net increase will mostly be absorbed by the studio apartments, which are already the least expensive. According to the revised term sheet for the project, which was prepared for the council meeting, 62 of the residence’s 90 units are studio apartments, representing nearly half of the building’s 144 bedrooms.

In a referendum in November 2014, 89 per cent of Concordia students voted in favor of the housing project, according to the CSU’s website. A 2014 market study by UTILE found that 4,200 beds were needed for students in Montreal.

 

Photo by Mackenzie Lad.

WRITTEN BY IAN DOWN AND MINA MAZUMDER

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A brief history of exclusion in university government

 

Déjà Vu

As the General Coordinator of the Concordia Student Union (CSU), Sophie Hough-Martin should have been on Concordia’s Senate.

According to the CSU’s standing regulations, the general coordinator and the academic and advocacy coordinator are ex-officio representatives of the CSU on Senate, Concordia’s senior academic governing body.

But earlier this term, Hough-Martin was denied a place on both Senate and the Board of Governors. At the time, she was in conditional academic standing, which, under Concordia’s bylaws, disqualified her from participating. Hough-Martin said that a major depressive episode in fall 2017 was the reason for her conditional standing. “I was unable to complete my coursework by the prescribed deadlines for an incomplete [grade],” she said.

Earlier this month, Hough-Martin’s academic standing was re-evaluated and she was no longer in conditional standing. However, the incident led to the revival of a 2016 Senate ad hoc committee on student eligibility. Hough-Martin and Mikaela Clark-Gardner, the CSU’s academic and advocacy coordinator, successfully requested to have the committee reconvene to review academic standing requirements for student representatives.

This is not the first time this year that Concordia students have had to fight for representation. In January, the administration announced that the two undergraduate and two graduate students who would participate in the Task Force on Sexual Violence would be chosen by the administration, not by the CSU. Although the administration reversed this decision a week later following a CSU press conference criticizing the recruitment process, it did not remove academic standing requirements for task force participants.

Sophia Sahrane, the research and education coordinator for the student advocacy organization Association for the Voice of Education in Quebec (AVEQ), criticized the requirements for discriminating against survivors of sexual violence. “How do you maintain a good academic standing when you have just been sexually assaulted?” she asked at a CSU press conference in February. “When you have had your agency taken away from you? […] When your abuser is your professor?”

Three years prior to the Task Force controversy, Lucinda Marshall-Kiparissis, then the CSU’s general coordinator, and Marion Miller, then a fine arts representative on Senate, were stripped of their rights as senators after participating in the 2015 student strikes. Their roles in the protests led to a sanction under Concordia’s Office of Rights and Responsibilities, which disqualified them from voting and participating in closed sessions. However, an ad hoc committee, the same one that reconvened last month, struck down this bylaw, and Miller and Marshall-Kiparissis had their rights as senators restored.

 

Uncommon Practice

“The majority view expressed over the years is that excluding students on conditional standing is not meant to penalize them but a way of helping them avoid additional burden so that they can focus on their studies and redress their academic standing,” said University Spokesperson Mary-Jo Barr.

“This seems to be kind of a dismissive approach from the Concordia institution,” said Guillaume Lecorps, president of the Quebec Student Union (QSU), which represents eight student associations from around Quebec. He said he was not aware of such regulations at any of the universities that the QSU represents.

In fact, Concordia is one of the only universities in Quebec with academic requirements for students who want to participate in school government. Bishop’s University is the only one with similar requirements.

Of the top 27 Canadian universities listed in the 2019 Times Higher Education ranking, only two—Carleton University and the Memorial University of Newfoundland—mention academic standing requirements in their bylaws. Concordia is in the bottom six rankings in a list which also includes the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia.

 

The Legal Question

In a statement to The Concordian, Marshall-Kiparissis said that if Concordia’s administration wanted to “show respect for the new student representatives they allow, they should try actually abiding by the Accreditation Act instead of making excuses for their ‘interpretation’ of the law.”

Section 32 of Quebec’s Act respecting the accreditation and financing of students’ associations states that “An accredited students’ association or alliance may, alone, appoint students who, under an Act, regulation, by-law, charter or agreement, are called upon to sit or participate as student representatives on various councils, committees or other bodies in the institution.”

At a regular council meeting on Oct. 10, councillor Rory Blaisdell introduced a motion to allocate $10,000 towards taking legal action against the administration for allegedly violating the Accreditation Act. “We’re gonna take it to court, and we’re gonna have a judge come down and set the precedent, and say ‘No, Concordia, you can’t do this,’” he said. Council moved to go into closed session after the motion was introduced, and Blaisdell declined to comment on the proceedings.

However, a legal dispute between the CSU and the administration could be precedent-setting. Patrice Blais is vice president of Grievance and Collective Agreement for the Concordia University Part-time Faculty Association. He is also part of the ad hoc committee that is investigating the issue of academic requirements. Because of his place on the committee, he declined to offer an interpretation of the Accreditation Act. “However, I can tell you that this issue has not been the issue of litigation and there exists no jurisprudence currently on this issue, so any legal opinion has to be taken with a grain of salt,” he said.

* * *

Hough-Martin said the CSU’s executives will attend a steering committee on Oct. 30 to discuss the composition, timing and overview of what will be looked at on the ad hoc committee. Hough-Martin hopes this issue will be resolved by the end of her mandate.

“Students who are in precarious academic standing have even more interesting knowledge and life experience to bring to Senate,” Miller said, adding that they understand why students fall behind in their academics, and can suggest improvements that will help them, “So that’s a very valuable perspective to be getting.”

Archive graphic by Zeze Le Lin

Loyola’s long-running café closes its doors.

 

Last winter, the G-Lounge on Concordia’s Loyola campus was home to a bustling student-run café. Today, the bright, spacious hall on the CC building’s fourth floor sits locked and empty. The fraternity flags that adorn the walls are still visible through a crack in the doorway.

There was no formal announcement of the G-Lounge’s closing; The café’s last Facebook post, in March, was an ad for a Greek salad and grilled cheese trio. After it closed for its annual summer break, the G-Lounge never reopened.

It’s an abrupt and unfitting end for a café that was one of Loyola’s main hangouts for over 40 years. Concordia’s Inter Fraternity Council (IFC), a union of four fraternities and three sororities, opened the café in 1973. Early on in its history, in addition to snacks and coffee, the G-Lounge sold cigarettes. It also had a license to sell alcohol, which it lost in 1985 after “some fraternity shenanigans,” according to a video interview with former manager Blake Snow.

“I didn’t have any classes at Loyola, but I always seemed to find myself there,” one person commented on the G-Lounge’s Facebook page. “[I] have a lot of fond memories hanging out and studying [there].”

The G-Lounge “was our way of making profit and showcasing ourselves on school grounds,” said Athena Sita, president of the IFC since 2017. “There’s no other space anywhere at Concordia that shows that there’s Greek life here.”

Even in its final days, the G-Lounge was a popular study spot. “If you were to walk into the G-Lounge at noon [or] 1 p.m., you would see every table was full,” said Sita.

In its last year, the G-Lounge was plagued by issues with construction, management, and staffing. Sita said she arrived after summer break in 2017 to find structural damage in the ceiling, as well as water damage in the food preparation area, which took nearly the entire semester to fix.

Then, after a brief two-week stint in the winter of 2018, the café was forced to close again when one of its two managers resigned for personal reasons.

However, Sita said the café’s biggest problems began well before she arrived at the IFC. In the years leading up to its closing, the G-Lounge was facing new competition on campus, including a Tim Hortons in the Science Complex and a Hive Café in the Student Centre building.

“It was nearly impossible to keep us afloat in a pretty robust cafe and food market,” said Snow, who managed the G-Lounge from 2016 to early 2018. “We had the space, which most students loved using, but [they] would bring their own lunches [and] coffee.”

Despite the café’s popularity, Sita said the G-Lounge would typically only make about $100 a day. “There’s only so much money you can make off of $1 coffee,” she said. “We were making a bit of cash, but not enough to pay back our suppliers.”

Sita said that having rules against outside food would have only chased more customers away.

The café also suffered from a lack of volunteers. “Because we were in a bit of debt, we asked for people to volunteer their time instead of being able to employ [them],” said Sita. She said the IFC is still paying off its debt from the G-Lounge.

Despite its struggles, the G-Lounge reopened last March, and stayed open until the end of the academic year. However, with the café in financial jeopardy, the IFC entered into talks with the Dean of Students office (DoS)—which administers the G-Lounge—about giving up the space. At the time, the Concordia Student Union (CSU) was interested in co-managing the café.

 

Finally, after much deliberation, the IFC decided to stop renting the space from the DoS. “A vote was passed, and we decided that we were no longer going to be running [the G-Lounge],” said Sita.

Alexis Searcy, the CSU’s Loyola coordinator, said that, while the union is still in talks with the DoS about using the space, “our interest in administering the space has been greatly reduced.”

She said the CSU would eventually like to have food services in the G-Lounge and make it more open to the public; currently, the space must be booked in advance through Hospitality Concordia.

“I really hope that the G-Lounge space is opened up and used to its full advantage,” said Sita. “It’s one of the only spaces at Loyola that has so much light, and it’s such a huge space.”

Regardless of what replaces the G-Lounge, generations of Concordia students will feel its loss. Snow said that one of his favourite experiences when he was manager “Was parents walking up to me and going, ‘Gee, this place is still here, huh? That’s amazing. So many great memories in this place.’”

Photo by Ian Down.

Tuition hikes, administrative salaries put Concordia’s provost on the spot.

What was meant to be a short presentation by Concordia’s provost turned into a confrontation with the Concordia Student Union (CSU) at a regular council meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 10.

For more than an hour, CSU councillors questioned Graham Carr, provost and vice-president of academic affairs, on everything from tuition hikes and administrative salaries, to student representation in school governance.

Carr had been invited to give a presentation on Concordia’s nine strategic directions. His presentation highlighted some of the school’s recent achievements, including the opening of the Institute for Investigative Journalism, as well as some of the university’s goals, such as the establishment of a health institute at Concordia.

However, during a segment of the presentation on diversity in the faculty of engineering, Arts and Science Councillor, Margot Berner, asked about the administration’s recent tuition increase for international students.

“I’m wondering how promoting diversity factors into international student tuition hikes in engineering,” Berner said.

Carr said international student enrollment was significantly higher this semester than last fall despite the tuition hikes, and that this was a sign that “our fee structure is not an impediment to them coming.”

Following the presentation, Berner brought up the representation of students in Concordia’s governing bodies. “It makes it difficult to believe that there’s been any meaningful consultation with students when the highest representatives of the student body are not allowed to sit on these [governing bodies].”

In her executive report prepared for the meeting, CSU General Coordinator Sophie Hough-Martin said she had been denied a place on Concordia’s Senate and Board of Governors because of her conditional academic standing, due in large part to a major depressive episode in the fall of 2017.

Carr responded a working group had been formed to address the issue in the Senate.

Arts and Science Councillor, Patrick Quinn, alleged that the administration was violating Quebec’s Act Respecting the Accreditation and Financing of Students’ Associations. Article 32 of the act states that “The accredited students’ association or alliance may, alone, appoint students.”

Carr responded this point constituted a “difference of opinion” between the CSU and the administration.

“It is not a question of a disagreement or a difference of opinion as Mr. Carr said in the meeting,” Quinn told The Concordian. “It is what the law states.”

Arts and Science Councillor, Rowan Gaudet, questioned Carr on the administration’s commitment to divestment from fossil fuels. He said if the university was concerned about being able to make a profit, “why not [cut] things like administrative salaries, where we have a president who makes more than any other administrator in Quebec?”

Carr said Concordia has always been a “lean” university financially, and that the administration managed to weather provincial funding cuts without sacrificing its academic mission.

The CSU’s chairperson put an end to question period, at which point council resumed its regular business.

After the meeting, Quinn said, “Any good student union won’t be afraid to ask the tough questions. Our job is to obviously work with the administration, but it’s also there to ensure that our concerns are being voiced.”

Photo by Ian Down.

Uncertainty hangs over project timeline despite municipal contribution.

 

The Concordia Student Union (CSU) Woodnote Housing Project has just received an important contribution from the city of Montreal.

Last week, Mayor Valérie Plante announced the city would triple its previous contribution to the project from $500,000 to $1.6 million, according to The Montreal Gazette. Plante was quoted in The Gazette as saying “We want this project to get done, and so we are putting in a supplementary contribution to really give them a hand so that it happens.”

The extra funding came after the group overseeing the construction, Unité de travail pour l’implantation de logement étudiant (UTILE)—the non-profit housing rights organization—petitioned the city for more money, according to UTILE’s general coordinator, Laurent Levesque.

The Concordian previously reported that the housing project was facing unexpected financial difficulties. At a CSU council meeting in September, Levesque said the project’s budget needed to be increased from $14 million to $18 million. This was mainly due to the increasing cost of construction in the city and tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on steel and aluminum.

The timeline of the project is still uncertain, according to Levesque. Construction of the building still has not begun, and Levesque said he is not sure how the new contribution will affect the timeline. “There’s a lot of risk elements in construction,” he said. “It’s hard to get fixed dates right now because we depend on a lot of partners who are around the table.”

However, Levesque said UTILE’s target is to begin construction by the end of the year and to finish the project before the end of 2019.

Although Montreal has a large student population, the city is lacking in student housing. According to a study commissioned by UTILE in 2014, Montreal is in need of 4,200 beds for students. Levesque said that part of the reason for the shortage is provincial law, under which student housing is excluded from social housing projects.

In addition, “the traditional approach to student housing is residence halls, that are developed, owned and operated by universities themselves,” said Levesque. “This has been limited in supply because universities are directly dependent on the provincial government, [which] has to approve their capital projects.”

Once complete, the building located on Papineau Ave. across from Parc Lafontaine will have 90 units with 144 bedrooms.

The project was first approved by Concordia’s student body in a referendum in November 2014. According to the CSU’s website, 89 per cent of students voted in favor of the project.

Levesque acknowledged that given the demand for student housing in Montreal, the units being built by UTILE are “complementary.”

“We don’t want to pretend like the Woodnote is going to solve all of Montreal’s problems,” Levesque said. “We are hoping that there will be more co-ops like this in Montreal in the future, and that the city will finance them, and that the CSU’s lead will be replicated.”

File photo by Mackenzie Lad.

Lack of services leaves Loyola students feeling left out

 

The Loyola committee of the Concordia Student Union (CSU) is looking to break what it perceives as a sense of isolation at Concordia’s Loyola campus.

According to the minutes from a committee meeting on Sept. 24, “members agree that Loyola campus feels very isolated and that this isolation is at the root of many of Loyola’s problems.” This includes what the union’s Loyola Coordinator, Alexis Searcy, calls a “cycle of non-participation.”

Searcy said Loyola students often feel neglected “because services aren’t provided very regularly, because needs aren’t met there, because clubs and groups and even things like the CSU don’t spend as much time there, putting on events or mobilising there.”

Because of this, “[students] don’t reach out or they don’t mobilize or make their voices heard to people who could be making changes at Loyola,” said Searcy. She said this “makes the people at the heads of these institutions feel like Loyola isn’t a priority.”

It’s not just Loyola students who are affected by the campus’s isolation. “The most common comment I get from anyone when I tell them I’m the Loyola coordinator is like, ‘Oh, I’ve been there once, it was such a pain,’” said Searcy.

She said she would like to see more shuttles run later into the night. Searcy has also discussed with administrators the possibility of having a shuttle that runs between the campus and Vendôme metro station.

Not everyone finds Loyola isolating. “I generally avoid going to SGW if I can,” said Gabi Mandl, a PhD student who has studied on the campus for six and a half years. “Only for final exams do I go. I prefer the ambiance, the scenery, the people [of the Loyola campus].”

However, Mandl said the lack of student services on the campus is “really unfortunate. I wish [the Arts and Science Federation of Associations] and the [Graduate students Association] had main offices here that were open more often (or at all), so that we don’t have to waste a few hours running downtown for simple things like signatures or reference numbers that take five minutes.”

This fall, the CSU is opening a daycare on Bishop St. near the downtown campus to expand the school’s existing daycare services. While the union said they would like to open a facility at Loyola, no concrete plans exist yet.

In addition, Concordia’s Sexual Assault Resource Centre (SARC) only has one office in Concordia’s Hall building. “If you were sexually assaulted and you live at Loyola or go to school at Loyola, you have to tell health services, you go through a checkup, and then they make an appointment with SARC,” said Searcy, “which to me is just completely unacceptable.”

Finally, Searcy said the CSU is trying to host more events at Loyola to draw students to the campus. This includes the clubs cultural fair, a showcase of some of Concordia’s cultural clubs and student groups, which will be held on Oct. 19.

Searcy said in order to make these goals a reality, “you have to get students interested and mobilized as well, which takes time. It has to be a student-led initiative.”

File photo by Savanna Craig.

DJs with disabilities need better access to the studio, says program director.

For over a year now, accessibility has been a greater challenge than ever for CJLO’s employees and volunteers, especially those with unique accessibility needs.

Between CJLO’s studio and an elevator sits the G-Lounge, once a bustling student-run café. Allison O’Reilly, CJLO’s program director, said that when she first arrived at CJLO in the winter of 2017, the lounge was usually open and the elevator was easily accessible.

However, it did not reopen after summer break that year. Since then, O’Reilly said, the space has always been locked and empty, with a few exceptions. “The inconsistency of it all is very frustrating,” she said.

The G-Lounge had been run by Concordia’s Inter-Fraternity Council since 1973. Former G-Lounge manager Blake Snow said financial difficulties and understaffing, among other issues, forced the café to close. The room is now a reserved space, with bookings administered by the Dean of Students Office. Its doors are locked on both sides when not in use.

“For a while, security put us on a key list so we could have key access,” said O’Reilly. However, “when it comes to security, it’s hard to have consistency since so many people work the front desk of the AV building.”

O’Reilly is not concerned about her own needs, but instead those of others. “We have DJs and volunteers at CJLO who require access through the elevator because they have physical disabilities,” she said.

Every Friday, CJLO hosts Audio Penpals, a music and talk show “with a focus on the disability community,” according to CJLO’s website. O’Reilly said many of the show’s hosts have non-visible disabilities.

“A lot of the regular security people who work in the CC and the AV buildings are very helpful, very accommodating, they understand our situation, and I’m very grateful for them,” said O’Reilly. “But there has been the odd case where certain security guards have said some insensitive things towards some members of the station with silent disabilities.” She said this is likely due to lack of understanding of the volunteers’ disabilities.

The elevator is not the only thing on the other side of the G-Lounge. “It cuts off access to washrooms for us as well,” said O’Reilly. There is a men’s bathroom on the third floor below the studio, but the nearest women’s bathroom is on the other side of the G-Lounge, which means descending to the third floor and climbing the stairs at the other end of the hallway.

“I have no issue with security, I have no issue with Concordia, I have an issue with whoever runs the G-Lounge,” said O’Reilly.

In an email to The Concordian, university spokesperson Mary-Jo Barr said the Dean of Students, Andrew Woodall, was aware of the situation. “He understands the issue and will be working on a solution with CJLO,” she said.

O’Reilly said she would like the lounge to be open to everyone during regular hours. “The G-Lounge is such a big, beautiful study space, and having it closed is such a disservice to the students at Loyola Campus.”

The Concordian reached out to several DJ’s from Audio Penpals, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Photo by Ian Down.

“Who should the state let in? What is “right” or “wrong” when it comes to immigration public policies?” These are the first questions that appear on the website of the Centre for Immigration Policy Evaluation (CIPE).

Mireille Paquet, the centre’s co-director, said the first question alone could fill up a two-hour lecture.

Paquet is a professor in Concordia’s Department of Political Science who specializes in immigration policy. She was also the recipient of a Concordia University Research Award in the 2016-17 academic year. The following year, she was the William Lyon Mackenzie King Postdoctoral Fellow of the Canada Program at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Paquet co-directs the CIPE with Antoine Bilodeau, a professor of political science at Concordia who focuses on integration and “understanding the roots of views toward immigration and ethnic diversity,” according to the CIPE website. Paquet said that one of the centre’s goals is to educate students and the broader public on issues of immigration.

The CIPE offers a number of lectures and workshops for students interested in learning more about immigration policy, including talks that lay bare the experiences of those who pass through Canada’s immigration system. “CIPE is a research centre whose activities are based on the premise that informed decision-making regarding immigration-related issues must rest on clear knowledge about public policies and their impacts on immigrants as well as on receiving societies,” according to the centre’s website.

On Oct. 11, the CIPE will present “Recruiting Migrant Careworkers: The exploitation of financial needs, immigration precarity, and relationship,” a lecture that will discuss the exploitative practices of for-profit recruitment agencies in Canada, and the role that community organizations play in supporting those affected by these organizations.

In November, the centre will present a public lecture on a research paper entitled “From refugee protection to double punishment: Examining the institutional production of immigration penality.” According to the CIPE’s website, this lecture will explore the experiences of trans migrant women in the immigration and criminal justice systems.

Immigration has been a topic on the minds of many Quebecers—and people in the West more generally—over the past few years. The year 2015 is usually considered to mark the beginning of the migrant crisis in Europe, in which a wave of migrants sent political shockwaves throughout the continent, and the entire Western world. In the recent provincial election, Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) Leader François Legault famously pledged to cut Quebec’s annual immigration numbers from 50,000 immigrants to 40,000. He also promised to give new immigrants three years to learn French, after which point they would be subject to deportation should they fail a language test.

The CAQ’s policies were roundly criticized by Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard. “To say if you don’t pass the test you could be expelled? Horrible. You can’t talk about people that way,” he told the Montreal Gazette’s editorial board.

In addition to the intensive media coverage of the migrant crisis in Europe and the border crossing at Lacolle in southern Quebec, Montreal made headlines when it was declared a sanctuary city in 2017. Paquet said this is a noble gesture, but being a sanctuary city requires more than just a promise to refrain from deporting undocumented migrants. She said a true sanctuary city must commit to providing migrants with essential services.

Paquet said that in all of the discourse surrounding immigration, the voices of the migrants themselves are often lost. Immigrants are too often thought of as a burden, when in reality they bring economic benefits given the right conditions, according to Paquet. She added that the media has a role to play in promoting the voices of migrants.

Paquet said there was a large immigrant population at her high school when she was a student. Interacting with people whose parents had gone through Canada’s immigration system sparked a lifelong interest in immigration policy.

Students can learn more about the CIPE’s research and upcoming lectures and workshops by visiting the centre’s website.