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Government of Canada gives Concordia researchers $497,000 for climate research

A Concordia engineering research team will look into ways to reuse CO2 emissions. A first for this field of research, this project aims to help Canada reach its carbon-emission goals by 2050.

A research team from Concordia’s department of chemical and materials engineering, led by Yaser Khojasteh, was awarded $497,000 by the Climate Action and Awareness Fund, a federal government initiative to invest in Canadian projects that aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

One of Canada’s goals for ecological transition is to become carbon neutral by 2050, which means that the Canadian economy would no longer emit greenhouse gases or would offset all of its emissions.

Some of the means of achieving carbon neutrality are what are known as carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) techniques. CCUS is the process of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) for the purpose of recycling it for future use. The captured CO2 can be converted into hydrocarbons (such as methanol) or plastics and concrete. It could even be utilized for various chemical syntheses.

Khojasteh explained that by 2030, industries will have to pay a tax on CO2 emissions. According to chapter 2 of Canada’s 2030 emissions reduction plan, beginning in 2023, the tax on every ton of carbon emitted will begin to increase by $15 every year until it reaches $170 per ton.

One of the research team’s goals is to find cheaper ways to capture and recycle CO2 to encourage industries to eliminate the carbon they produce. Khojasteh is hopeful that if they can find a way to make the process cheaper than the tax that companies will have to pay, recycling will be an easy decision.

“Eventually we can use renewable energy for, say, our electricity demand, but chemicals, polymer, these kinds of things we are always going to need and these are the [manufacturing] plants that are going to be in operation forever,” said Khojasteh. 

CCUS techniques can often be very energy-consuming and expensive. Khojasteh explained that the carbon dioxide reutilization process often consumes a lot of hydrogen. The research team will therefore aim to find ways to reduce the hydrogen consumption or propose processes that require smaller amounts.

“We’re trying to explore different options, improve our process efficiency for the larger scale,” said Khojasteh. “It is something that hopefully will be ready soon because time is very limited. We know that, according to some projections, it could be a matter of a decade before the window is closed for reversible action.”

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News

Concordia’s steady path to a positive environment for the Black community

Since the 2020 Black Lives Matter surge, Concordia University’s initiatives to create a welcoming space for Black students and minorities alike have picked up steam

The world is now nearly three years removed from the massive wave of civil unrest sparked all around the globe by George Floyd’s tragic death. The sorrowful event also kicked off Concordia’s long-term commitment to creating a more welcoming and safe environment for minorities on campus. Today, student services like the Black Perspectives Office (BPO) are finally starting to find their footing within Concordia’s environment. 

Designed to connect and advocate for Black communities, the BPO came into effect in October 2020. The service is a way for Black students to find mentorship, support and funding opportunities to accompany them through their academic endeavours. 

Most recently, the office underwent a change with the arrival of its new manager Maurice Riley Case, who was appointed in January. Riley Case has a long history of advocacy for minorities and social work all around the country. 

“I hope to bring an even greater attention to the diversity and intersectionality of Black identities,” said Riley Case. “My colleagues and I look forward to collaborating with various units in order to design and sustain the conditions for Black Concordians to flourish across the University.”

Black students are a minority at Concordia. The BPO aims to help Black students reinforce and recognize their identity while connecting them to other members of the community. Riley Case calls this “Black Flourishing,” the celebration of range of experiences of the Black community. 

The BPO manager explained that the establishment of a “Black-specific student Resource and Success Centre” is essential for Black students, faculty and staff. The reform at the head of the BPO is only one of many signs that the future is bright for Black flourishing. A Black Student Centre is also set to open in the Concordia Hall building in Fall 2023, which will create a space for Black students to connect on campus. 

The President’s Anti-Racism Task Force also aided the creation of a positive environment for the Black community, a group created after Black Concordians demanded the University address systemic racism against Black people. With the task force’s two-year mandate now over, several recommendations have been submitted to the University.

Concordia Professor and former task force member Dr. Jacqueline Peters explained that the problems encountered by the task force were somewhat similar to the struggles for black people at Concordia. 

“Getting information is hard. Getting numbers of how many of us there are here[…] those were some of the things that we were sort of stuck on,” 

Said Peters.

According to Peters, the task force’s work was hindered by the severe unavailability of ethnic statistics, complicating the possibility of locating Black faculty, staff and students to conduct a thorough examination.

Despite the difficulties, the task force had a positive outcome, according to Peters. “We did word of mouth, we put out notifications which also worked well,” she said “One of the most positive aspects of working on the task force was all the Black people that got to know each other. Most of us have been here for many years and have never seen each other.”

While the creation of an inclusive environment is still a work in progress at Concordia, the sense of community among Black Concordians is starting to find a positive rhythm.

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News

Quebecers unite in solidarity for the fifth annual Muslim Awareness Week

People gathered in Montreal to commemorate those who lost their lives in the mosque shooting. Marieke Glorieux-Stryckman/THE CONCORDIAN

Six years after the mosque shooting in Quebec, the Muslim community is still fighting for change

On Jan. 29, six years after the Quebec City mosque shooting, a vigil to commemorate the victims took place at Parc station in Montreal. During the speeches, a man passed behind the crowd and shouted, “Islamophobia doesn’t exist in Quebec!” But is that true?

Hawraa Dbouk, a Concordia student who majors in biology, shared her own experiences: “I once was told, ‘If you want to work there, you might have to take off your hijab, at least at work.’” 

“I think we all take hijab in the wrong way, because we don’t actually know what Islam is about. Islam is all about loving, caring, sharing and tolerance,” 

said Dbouk.

On the evening of Jan. 29, 2017, gunfire interrupted the prayers in the Islamic Cultural Centre of Quebec City. The shooter killed six people and injured 19, which prompted the public debate on Islamophobia.

With the adoption of Bill 21 on June 16, 2019, the Canadian Muslim community has faced even more challenges. This secularism law prohibits public services and public sector workers from wearing religious symbols like hijabs.

“We can’t neglect how many women are getting fired or not even allowed to get employed because of their hijab,” Dbouk said. “I don’t think any religion should be included in work or should be forbidden. We should raise awareness about Islamophobia and biases. Work with me because I am your co-worker, but not because I am wearing a hijab.”

Ghadir Elsayed, who works as an administrator of Integrated Health and Social Services Centres (CISSS), was one of the volunteers in the Jan. 29 vigil. However, she was one of the only two hijabis in the CISSS healthcare system building. 

“When I observed that, it was heartbreaking,”

said Elsayed. 

She also talked about her friend who works as a teacher: “They have to find a job in a school in another province, or in Ontario, and it’s even hard for the student to be appreciated by their act and representation of their own religion.”

Elsayed pointed out the fact that there are no specific resources for Muslim people who are affected by the secularism legislation. “Because of Bill 21, we should have a system built up, federally or provincially, to help teachers, students and other workers who are affected by this law to find a job,” she said. “And they don’t have social workers or psychologists that are more available to them than to other communities.”

Elsayed was encouraged by her friends to find jobs in locations that do not accept hijabi workers. “I didn’t want to go straight to my salary,” Elsayed continued, “I just want to make sure that I am represented, and my community is represented[…]”

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News

ConUHacks: winners’ submission sparks outrage online

The team found themselves at the center of controversy after winning first place

The winning team of Concordia’s ConUHacks event came under fire last weekend after accusations of violating competition rules were posted online.

ConUHacks, the event which the project was produced for, is a yearly competition during which teams must conceptualize and code an application in only 24 hours to impress judges and potentially win prizes. This “hackathon” is primarily organized by Concordia’s HackConcordia club.

NearByNow, the winning submission, was accused of being presented to judges under false pretence and omitting key lines of code to prove its authenticity. This led to an investigation into the validity of the winners’ application.

Although the accusations were proven false, the winning coders are now worried of online harassment. 

“I was confused. We all were,” said Samuel Chuang, a fourth-year computer science student at Concordia and one member of the winning team. “Honestly, I had to think to myself, maybe we did do something wrong.”

Chuang said everything went well during the competition, leaving the judges impressed. Their hard work was rewarded with first place. 

Six days later, Chuang found out about the controversy forming around their application.

A post on Concordia’s official Reddit page that called the team’s winning project fraudulent garnered the attention of many who had participated at the event. 

Soon, Chuang said he’d seen a post by an anonymous user on Concordia’s official engineering and computer science Discord server, suggesting users should flood the team’s LinkedIn pages with negative comments. 

“Hate on the project as much as you want but there’s a potential of ruining people’s reputation,”said Chuang.

Chuang and his team contacted Major League Hacking (MLH), who help run weekend-long hackathons like ConUHacks and partly oversee judgment. 

“We found what we would expect to see from a hackathon project built in just 24 hours,” said Ryan Swift, a member of the MLH who reviewed the team’s project.  

According to Swift, Chuang’s team was accused of faking the demonstration of their project. More specifically, by faking results given by the programmed A.I., which ran the application. They were also suspected of omitting the code which the A.I. had been programmed through- what’s known as a “neural network.” 

NearByNow shows users information about a storefront or company in real time once given a logo. This feature relies on multiple application programming interfaces (API), for example one from Google Maps. The A.I. then communicates with the API to produce the desired results. 

The neural network was not made public, which added to the accusers’ suspicions. Swift said his team verified its existence as well as its timestamps to confirm that it was coded during the hackathon. 

The team would also “hard-code” data given by the application. Hard-coding data means that the results given by the program are directly put into the code rather than obtained by prompts. According to Swift, this was done for simplicity’s sake and the team had done nothing to break the competition’s rules.

“Because they are developed in just a single weekend, hackers don’t typically follow industry-best practices,” said Swift. “Their projects are often laden with bugs, and many features aren’t fully completed.” 

Vatsa Shah, co-president of HackConcordia, the club responsible for organizing ConUHacks, said his team did not appreciate the public accusations of malicious intent towards the team. “Our team is always willing to investigate and review issues as they arise, but we prefer to do so in private specifically because of situations like this where public backlash can take over,” he said.


An official comment was written by the MLH under the original accusatory Reddit post stating that the investigation had been completed.

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News

The Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy hosts a naloxone training

Concordia’s student community looks increasingly supportive of having an open conversation about drug use

In Canada, in the first half of 2021 alone, an average of 19 people died from opioid-related overdoses every day, with a daily hospitalization of 16 people according to the federal special advisory committee on opioid overdoses. 

For the Concordia chapter of the Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy (CSSDP) and other harm reduction organizations, these numbers could be greatly attenuated through education, support for substance users, broad access to naloxone as well as safe supplies and safer injection sites. 

The CSSDP hosted a naloxone training on Jan. 26 at Le Frigo Vert at the downtown campus. Students and people in the broader Concordia community were invited to learn how to administer naloxone (also known as Narcan) to counter the effects of opioid overdose.

Harm reduction refers to the set of strategies aimed at limiting health or social risks related to a specific issue.

CSSPD member Assaf Azerrad explained that advocating for a harm reduction approach in the context of drugs meant taking the stance that drug use should not be encompassed in the criminal justice system, but instead should be understood as a public health and human rights issue.

In Oct. 2021, the CSSDP developed an anonymous 15-question survey about the perception and consumption of substances by the Concordia student body. The survey was aimed at gaining a deeper insight into how to deliver substance use education to students. A document sent to The Concordian from the CSSPD highlights that, among the 350 respondents, 60.3 per cent said they considered drug education on campus to be extremely important.

According to CSSDP member Alice Gendron, the data demonstrated a change in students’ perception of drug use and a greater openness to discussing the topic.

“The thing that is changing is maybe how open people are with talking about their substance use,” said Gendron. “There seems to be a progression in how open people are and that’s really something we focus on a lot as an organization because the more people are isolated in their consumption, that’s when issues can arise.”

Concordia student and substance analyst at CACTUS Philippe Lavoie said that opening this conversation is a way for people to start consuming more sensibly and in safer environments. CACTUS is a Montreal-based organization centered around harm reduction and prevention of sexually transmitted and blood borne infections.

“Especially with the rise of opioid overdose, I think people are thinking we should talk about this situation,” said Lavoie. “I think youth are feeling more empowered, and groups like CSSDP really help people feel safe to talk about it and exchange ideas.”

CSSPD member João Barbosa emphasized that naloxone kits are available for free at any pharmacy for everyone in Quebec. 

“The most important thing is to learn how to use it because people might be afraid to administer it,” said Barbosa. “We want to help people to learn to recognize an overdose, and how to act in such a situation.”

The CSSPD also offers a substance analysis service to test substances for potential contamination with opioids such as Fentanyl. For Lavoie, this is an important harm reduction tool as the amount of street drugs that are laced with Fentanyl or Benzodiazepine rises.

“It’s part of consuming sensibly to know what you consume,” said Lavoie. “The fact of knowing what’s in it, you can better assess the risks. Knowing the different cutting agents allow us to give better harm reduction tips as well.”

Individuals that are interested in free, anonymous drug testing are encouraged to go to the CACTUS checkpoint at 1300 rue Sanguinet or to the CSSPD on Fridays from 12 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Le Frigo Vert. 

Harm reduction organizations in Montreal include CACTUS, which offers supervised injection sites throughout the island, Groupe de Recherche et d’Intervention Psychosociale , a mobile drug-checking service, Dopamine in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve as well as Spectre de rue.

On campus, the Recovery and Wellness Community Centre offers resources for Concordia students who have experienced addiction and/or are in recovery.

A previous version of this article stated that the CSSPD partnered with CACTUS for the training. This was incorrect.

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News

ConUHacks: coding competition at Concordia sponsors protection against cybersecurity

The Communications Security Establishment was looking for top coders last week at ConUHacks, as risks to cybersecurity increase

Coders from all ranges of experience filled the halls of Concordia’s JMSB and Hall buildings to compete in HackConcordia’s annual hackathon, ConUHacks. The event was host to many sponsors who planted respective booths to receive and recruit promising talent or “hackers.” 

The event was established by Terril Fancott, a computer science and software engineering professor at Concordia, who passed away in 2020. HackConcordia continues to host the hackathon in honour of his memory. 

A hackathon has teams of coders programming a project in a set amount of time. At ConUHacks, participants had 24 hours to finish their work and impress the judges to potentially win prizes. 

This year, the event had the most participants since its start in 2014, with over 800 applications.

However, the presence of the Communications Security Establishment of Canada (CSE) at the event was more than just for recruiting top coders. As  people continue to crowd the internet with their personal information, the CSE hoped to raise awareness of  cybersecurity threats.

Vatsa Shah, co-president of HackConcordia, said students interested in working for the CSE were encouraged to complete their sponsored challenge. Teams that could design programs around cybersecurity — for example, apps that could test password security — would be eligible to win extra prizes. Most importantly, they’d catch the attention of the CSE’s recruiters. 

“The experience they might gain here, that translates to real life,” said Shah. “Pushing to the limit, with challenges they can only get here.”

In a recent article by the CBC, head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security Sami Khoury advised to be more cautious than ever when posting personal information online. Khoury singled out TikTok as an application that caught the organization’s attention. 

Darren Holden, a software developer for the CSE, said that his team works towards building and maintaining applications that block malicious domains from Canadian networks. Although Holden couldn’t speak to specific threats on TikTok, he advised caution when using social media. 

“There’s always potential for harm due to poor cybersecurity,” Holden said. 

Holden encouraged those who are concerned about cybersecurity threats to visit the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security advisory website, which offers advice to users on safely using the web. 

The hackathon also gave novel coders the chance to gain experience in a setting that offered new challenges.

Nicolas Pop, a second-year computer science student at Concordia, took advantage of ConUHacks to hone his skills in A.I. programming. He recognized the importance of cybersecurity and expressed interest in applying to the CSE. 

“As we move towards a society that practically lives online, we need to protect the vital information being stored,” said Pop. Although his knowledge of coding for cybersecurity was limited, he took the opportunity to speak with recruiters and further immerse himself in a new field.  

Although he didn’t win, Pop aims to practice his skills to program a project of better quality next year. 

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Students are buzzing for the new Hive Café

The Hive's new location at the Loyola campus, which opened on Monday, January 23rd. CATHERINE REYNOLDS/The Concordian

The Hive Café has finally opened its doors on the Loyola campus with a fully affordable vegetarian menu

The new location of the Hive Café finally opened on Jan. 23 on the second floor of the CJ building at Loyola Campus. 

The café, which is open Monday through Friday from 8:15 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., mirrors the same menu as the downtown location with a selection of sandwiches, soups, salads and sweets, as well as coffee and cold drinks. 

The Hive Café strives to be as sustainable as possible by offering only vegetarian and vegan options and by prioritizing locally sourced ingredients. 

“We work closely with our local suppliers and producers, so we can maintain affordable food for students while keeping our costs low,” said Calvin Clarke, the café’s manager. “Within the competitive environment of restoration, that can be difficult sometimes, but that is a priority for us.” 

“They also strive to be allergen friendly,” said Clarke. “We have a nut-free kitchen both for the Hive and also the Hive free lunch.”

The Hive Café Co-op offers a membership program for users. Students can purchase a ten-dollar membership card which gives them access to ten per cent off on all products sold at the café for life. 

The café was supposed to open last semester, but did not. According to Clarke, the main reason for the delay was due to lengthy negotiations with the administration for the signing of the lease. 

“It was kind of a difficult situation for us,” he said. “We figured that the best thing was to say we’re going to open up in the winter semester, and we’ll be true to our word for that.” 

The Hive is a cooperative that strives to provide fair labour, according to Clarke. “That’s always a priority for us, and within our board of directors we do have worker member seats, right now five seats available for worker members.”

The Hive invites all of its members to an annual general meeting (AGM), which is usually in October or November. An AGM is a meeting where the status of a company or Co-op is shared with all members and they make decisions on its future.

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Concordia set to launch new Kaié:ri Nikawerà:ke Indigenous Bridging Program

Graphic by Sarah Alouani // @okaruno

This program, the first of its kind in Quebec, will launch in Fall 2023

Next fall, Concordia will launch its new Kaié:ri Nikawerà:ke Indigenous Bridging Program, which will help Indigenous students get into engineering programs. 

The program will be three semesters long and will offer prerequisite courses to Indigenous students who are missing these courses going into their bachelor’s degree. Once they complete the program, students enrolled will be automatically transferred into the engineering program of their choice. 

“Particularly, we started in the STEM [Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] field because there are a lot of educational barriers that some Indigenous communities face when it comes to STEM education,” said the program coordinator Saba Din.

The Kaié:ri Nikawerà:ke Indigenous Bridging Program was part of the recommendations made in the Indigenous Direction Action Plan in 2021. This plan has the goal of decolonizing and indigenizing Concordia University. 

“Kaié:ri Nikawerà:ke” is a Kanien’kéha word meaning “the Four Winds” or “the Four Directions.” According to Din, these winds represent growth, renewal, and change.

A core tenet of the Indigenous Bridging Program is to provide a sense of community through a support network for students enlisted in the program. Students will be in the same group for three semesters and will have access to resources to help them transition into university life.

The program will also offer a special student-focused seminar class. This class will cover themes including self-advocating, adapting to life in the city, and rental advice. Guest speakers will include tutors, engineers, or elders, with a priority on Indigenous guests. 

“I think that community feeling is really beneficial for long-term success,” said Din. “Especially to ease that transition from wherever they’re coming from, whatever barriers they face.”

Mariah St. Germain, the coordinator of Indigenous Student Success at Concordia’s Otsenhákta Student Centre, is hopeful that the program will help Indigenous students adapt to the post-secondary environment. 

“I know how meaningful these programs are for students to bridge the gap and gain access,” said St. Germain. “We want any prospective Indigenous students, and our current Indigenous students, and our alumni, to know that they have a place in the community here and that they’re seen and heard, and that they can thrive in that space.”

While the Indigenous Bridging Program is currently tailored to engineering degrees, Din said they plan to expand the program gradually in the upcoming academic years. The next majors on the list are business and psychology, followed by science and computer science, and finally expanding to arts and science. 

“We hope that students feel that they have options,” Din said. “This is just another option for them. Hopefully it opens the door to post-secondary education.”

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Stranded for the holidays

Concordia students struggled to fly home to their families amidst delayed and cancelled flights

For many, snow storms over this holiday season meant dreams of a white Christmas came true. However, for other students trying to fly home to their families, snow storms meant flight delays and unforeseen challenges. 

Emily Jans, a first-year therapeutic recreation student from Alberta, faced these challenges when her flight from Toronto to Edmonton was cancelled on Dec. 21. Jans said she was forced to choose between spending Christmas there or an extra $850 to be with her family in Alberta. 

“Basically, I was stranded in Toronto,” she said.

Jans said she was notified by Flair Airlines that her flight had been delayed by three hours after she arrived at the airport. 

Three hours later, as she was getting ready to check in, she got another email. 

“I didn’t really check it, but I go upstairs, and I see a big line of other angry people, and I was like ‘oh no, what is happening?’ And then I checked my email; my flight was cancelled.” 

said Jans

According to Jans, the flight was cancelled because it did not have a crew for the plane. The next available flight was on Dec. 28. Unless she had found another option, she would spend Christmas alone in Toronto.

“That’s when the panic ensued,” she continued. Because she would have to stay in Toronto for a few days, the airline was responsible for arranging hotel accommodations for her, according to Canada’s Air Passenger Rights. But for Jans, spending a week in Toronto was not an option. 

She started looking for different ways to get home, including a three-day train leaving on Christmas Eve. She tried calling the airline and was told that she was the 400th customer in line. She requested a callback, which she never got. 

She found an available ticket on a Westjet flight for $855.55 plus baggage fees. The total price of her initial flights was $637.04. 

She decided to pay the extra, but said: “The one thing I kept thinking when I bought my ticket was: ‘This is the price of a flight outside of Canada.’ My friends were going to France and Mexico… That’s the price of going to France, but I was just going to Alberta.”

On her way back to Montreal, Jans’ suitcase got damaged. According to her, “a lot of people had broken luggage.”

Jans  hopes she will get a reimbursement for the cancelled flight. According to a customer service agent with Flair Airlines, the refund can take up to 10 days. For now, Jans has not heard back from the airline.

For Rodrigo Allison, a second-year finance student from Mexico, these flight difficulties resulted in spending three hours in a plane during a snowstorm. 

Allison was scheduled to fly home to Mexico on the morning of Dec. 16, with a layover in Denver. He got an email from Air Canada warning him that the weather might affect his flight, but until the day of the flight, everything seemed to be running as scheduled.

Once inside the plane, the pilot announced that the weather was not safe enough to leave. Allison ended up spending three hours on that plane. “They didn’t give us any information [about what was happening],” he said. 

Allison missed his layover by an hour and a half. He got to Denver in the early afternoon and was told that the next available flight was the next morning. He spent the rest of the day and the night alone in the airport.

On Jans’ end, she is very disappointed with her experience. “I’m a student, and if they offer it [cheap flights], if they have low-fare airlines, that’s amazing. But I don’t think that should be taken away from the respect that we deserve as people. We were not treated with respect at all.”

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News

Teachers shift gears to avoid A.I. plagiarism

As concern over students using A.I. chatbots rises, teachers must prepare to deal with the issue constructively.

OpenAI, a leading artificial intelligence research laboratory, has recently launched ChatGPT, a text-generating tool open to all for free. This chatbot is capable of understanding and answering questions through prompts, and hence is becoming extremely popular among students.

Textbots like ChatGPT can rescue last-minute assignments that can range from writing Shakespearean poetry to doing calculus. As such A.I. gets exploited by students, teachers are looking for ways to detect such plagiarism.

“We clearly need to come up with new ways to evaluate learning if we want to avoid these bots to be used to fake student work,” said Bérengère Marin-Dubuard, an A.I. enthusiast and teacher in interactive media arts at Dawson College.

Marin-Dubuard also expressed her thoughts on the quality of the text written by the A.I.

“The text generated is interesting, but in the end I’d be surprised if many people just don’t do the work,” she said. “It’s probably even more work to set it up.”

Marin-Dubuard encourages her class to embrace the new technology as a tool, but she remains wary of the threat of plagiarism. 

ChatGPT’s technology relies on natural language processing — a subfield of computer science based on the interaction between computers and human language.

“One part of how ChatGPT works is by learning complex patterns of language usage using a large amount of data,” said Jackie CK Cheung, an associate computer science professor at McGill University and the Associate Scientific Director at Mila A.I. Institute of Quebec. 

“Think at the scale of all the text that is on the internet,” Cheung added. “The system learns to predict which words are likely to occur together in the same context.”

He explained that the developing A.I. would eventually improve as researchers and users feed it new knowledge, a process known as “deep learning.”

Cheung knew that the easily accessible ChatGPT and related models could increase students’ temptation to plagiarize. He noted that instructors will have to adapt their methods of evaluation, and try resorting more to in-person or oral communication. Cheung added;

“There could also be innovations in which ChatGPT-like models can be used as an aid to help with improving the learning process itself.” 

A question of ethics has remained, as A.I. continues to develop in art and writing. Both art and text generators have been accused of plagiarism. Last month, artists online flooded art-hosting websites to prevent A.I. from generating proper images. Last week, a substack blog was outed as being written by A.I. by one of its plagiarized writers. 

Julia Anderson, who finds new ways to interact with developing technology and has collaborated with the Montreal A.I. Ethics Institute, said that A.I. should not be simply used to do the work for you. She believes that ChatGPT and similar models could be used as tools to help conceptualize projects or aid in teaching and supporting students. A.I. tools like LEX offer support in conceptualizing ideas, something Anderson thought teachers could use to aid them in making a curriculum. 

“You can make a similar argument with other technologies, like Google translate,” Anderson said. “But it’ll be at the discretion of the user to decide what to edit.”

With schools now beginning to look for methods of detecting A.I. plagiarism, Edward Tian, a 22-year-old computer science major from Princeton University, developed GPTZero. The program can detect work written by the OpenAI software. 

Other methods of dissuading students’ temptations to plagiarize, according to Anderson, could include digital watermarks and the requirement to pay in order to be able to copy text. 

Nonetheless, Anderson understands that such measures cannot strictly assure legitimacy. 

“Going forward I’m sure there’s going to be more problems,” she said. “At the end of the day, it comes down to human discretion.”

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Queer Montrealers gathered for a vigil in memory of the victims of the Club Q shooting

Biographies and photographs were placed on top of gay and transgender pride flags in rememberance of the five victims. CATHERINE REYNOLDS/The Concordian

The local LGBTQIA+ community met in solidarity with queer Americans after a shooting in an LGBTQIA+ club

On Nov. 26, Montrealers gathered in the Gay Village for a solidarity vigil sharing their thoughts and grief surrounding the recent Club Q shooting. For many, this was a time to discuss the violence queer people experience on a daily basis.

On Nov. 19, the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, a gunman entered the LGBTQIA+ club in Colorado Springs and opened fire where 25 people were injured and five were killed. This event has left Colorado’s queer community devastated, serving as a reminder of a past shooting that had killed 49 people at the Pulse gay club in Orlando, Florida in 2016. LGBTQIA+ people throughout the world have spoken out in support of the victims and their loved ones. 

“Five lives were stolen away by systemic homophobia and transphobia,” said Celeste Trianon, one of the organizers of the vigil.

Trianon said that, while the shooter was responsible for the tragedy, the system itself was at fault. According to them, queer people experience systemic violence due to the spread of a far-right political agenda in North America.

“What kills us in the end is isolation, poverty, officials who never respect our identities,” said Trianon. “It is all the forms of hatred that we live every day that kill us and that is what we must fight against.”

Gabriel Paquette, a speaker at the event, said they came to support their American counterparts. 

“The thing about the queer community is that we’re not blood related so we’re all a little bit family, as idealized as that idea may be,” said Paquette. “When there’s an attack on a few of us, there’s an attack on all of us, especially when it’s in a space where we’re celebrating our joy of being ourselves, especially on trans day of remembrance. It shocked us to the core of our being, but we knew it was coming with the legislative violence in the US.”

Paquette also denounced the growing climate of hate and fear surrounding queer people in the US, a sentiment echoed by many in attendance.

“In Canada it’s coming as well. For example, in Ottawa there was an anti-trans demonstration yesterday [Nov. 25],” said Paquette, referring to an incident at an Ottawa high school surrounding transgender students using the restrooms corresponding with their respective genders.

They also mentioned how candidates in the most recent Ontario elections pushed for the abolition of support for queer children.

“In Quebec we have the particularity that there are language barriers so the American and British philosophies take longer to reach us but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have organizations that have the same issues […] and that are doing political lobbying to take away our rights in the long run,” explained Paquette. 

They cited, among others, the organization Pour les droits des femmes du Québec, a women’s rights group receiving funding from the provincial government and known to be trans-exclusionary.

The last survey conducted by the Bureau de lutte contre l’homophobie et la transphobie in 2017 found that “over 40% of the population surveyed has witnessed an act of homophobic or transphobic discrimination.”

Participants shared their worries but also their hopes, hugging those who were crying and trying to comfort each other.

“Today was about getting together as a group to try to send some love to those who are there [the US], our distant family,” said Paquette.

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Excessive spending by Space Concordia

A history of excessive spending at Space Concordia

CORRECTION: The article in question was initially taken down for revision purposes relating to generalized language. Details to the alterations are found below.

How much does it cost to build a rocket? That is the question Concordia’s Engineering and Computer Science Association (ECA) has asked Space Concordia (SC), the student association responsible for mismanaged and unorganized financial practices. Official ECA documents and board meeting transcripts provided to The Concordian reveal a history of irresponsible spending by the organization dating back to the 2020-21 academic year.

SC remains the largest student association under ECA jurisdiction, and, as of the beginning of the 2022-23 academic year, has access to the most funds of any committee under the association via a combination of ECA-approved grants, internal transfers, and external sponsorship’s, according to the societies official ECA approved budget. Despite this fact, according to reports SC spending have exceeded their ECA budget in the past, resulting in the ECA being forced to provide SC with thousands of dollars of additional funds to pay off the personal debt incurred by SC members.

Exact figures remain impossible to calculate without the ECA’s financial budgetary statements from the last three years, in which the ECA has yet to file due to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

However, a senior member of SC rocketry division, who preferred to stay anonymous, estimates the cumulative costs of the personal debts they have accrued from SC projects over their tenure range into the hundreds of thousands.  

“In the past few years I spent like hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I’ve had to ask for reimbursements of hundreds of thousands of dollars,” they said.

While these price ranges seem high to the average person, the senior member says that these costs are relatively low compared to the operational budgets of most space agencies that are doing the same work, believing the price range is justified. 

“We’ve already broken multiple world records over the past four years on this project,” they said. “It’s going to be the first liquid rocket ever launched from Canadian soil. We’re working with the government to create legislation for rockets in Canada. We’ve created state-of-the-art technology. And because of that, we go through thousands of transactions a year and hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.”

In addition, SC was accused of violating several key ECA bylaws regulating the spending habits of student organization under their jurisdiction. These actions include opening a secondary bank account for SC use, separate from its official ECA-monitored bank account which is in violation of Section D.3.3. of the ECA’s bylaws, and failing to keep accurate and up-to-date documentation of their expenses in accordance to bylaws D.3.5 and D.3.6.

These transgressions culminated in SC being put on extended probation by the ECA’s Board of Directors on Aug. 24, 2021. SC was informed by the ECA that they must comply with several conditions relating to the organization’s financial practices or “face dissolution” of their association, in the follow up letter sent by the ECA. Further steps were taken by the ECA to investigate SC financial practices dating back to the 2018 academic year.

In the same letter dated to Oct. 27, 2021, the ECA confirmed that SC had complied with a majority of the demands of the probation period sufficient to continue their probation.

However, the ECA did note that the organization failed to cease “all activity during the time of [SC’s] probation” and had yet to hand over all expense receipts to the association. At the same time, an anonymous source within the ECA has confirmed that no amount of student funds associated with SC are unaccounted for. The anonymous source made sure to dispel rumors of financial malpractice.

In an email sent to The Concordian, ECA president Sierra Campbell confirmed that SC “successfully met the terms of the BOD [Board of Directors] to end their probation” as of Dec. 3, 2021. Campbell made sure to stress that the violations occurred during a previous mandate and that the current SC leadership have “worked extensively alongside the ECA executive to create clear understanding of internal payment procedures as well as communication to members of the club,” stated the email.

Despite these measures, a financial blacklist was established by the ECA in a board of directors meeting on Sunday, Aug. 21, 2022, to address the “Space Concordia Member Issue” the motivation read. The blacklist prevented individuals from having any of their expenses reimbursed through ECA funds.

  • The original Deck: “A history of excessive spending puts Space Concordia’s future into question,” was misleading, insinuating that Space Concordia’s future is still in jeopardy. As of Dec. 3, 2021. Space Concordia has passed the probation period.
  • A previous version of this story mentions that SC receives “the most funds out of any committee under the association (ECA).” The ECA provides the most funds annually to the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers).
  • A previous version of this story mentions that SC “consistently exceeded their ECA budget,” the word “consistently” was improperly used.
  • A previous version of this story mentions preamble of a quote from an anonymous member of SC stating that the member “estimates his personal debts accrued by SC project range into the hundreds of thousands.” This has been altered to “estimates the cumulative costs of the personal debts they have accrued from SC projects over their tenure.” This is validated by the following quote from the aforementioned member.
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