Sir George Williams – The Concordian

Hopes went down for the Concordia Student Union (CSU) when learning a few weeks back that the last potential building to accommodate student housing was being replaced by a condo project.

The building, located on the corner of Mackay St., was once home to Mizan Gourmet, a Mediterranean supermarket, and Copy Concordia, among other shops and restaurants. It will be demolished any day now.

“We got an email that the building was bought, that it’s going to be torn down and that it’s going to be turned into a condo building,” said CSU President Chris Kalafatidis. “The reason why we’re so offended by this building is that once it goes up it’s over. It can never be undone.”

The building is said to be 20-storey high.

“To put things in context, JMSB is less than 20 storeys,” said Kalafatidis. “This is going to be the tallest object and it’s going to be in the middle of our campus.”

Kalafatidis is also concerned by the lack of infrastructure Concordia offers its students as well as its professors. According to Kalafatidis, students should have more welcoming infrastructures to hang out in and feel attached to their university.

However, Concordia replied in an email to The Concordian that in the past years, the university has invested in the construction and renovation of infrastructure such as the PERFORM center in 2011, EV building in 2005, and JMSB in 2009.

The building cornering Maisonneuve and Mackay St. was of interest to the CSU to achieve a long living goal: a student building. Not only would it serve to house all Concordia clubs, but would also feature things such as places to hang out, restaurants run by students, and maybe even a movie theatre, according to Kalafatidis.

He says such a project would be feasible.

We have the money [to pay for the building] because back in early 2000 we established a fund called the SSAELC fund,” said Kalafatidis. SSAELC stands for Student Space, Accessible Education, and Legal Contingency. “The purpose of this fund is to buy a club building and now it’s acquired enough wealth where we can actually do that.”

Following Concordia’s historical expansion, such a building would also serve as a way to build a campus proper to the university. Unlike many others, Concordia’s Sir-George-Williams campus is not a traditional distinct campus. Located in the middle of Montreal’s downtown, the university shares its location with dozens of shops and restaurants. Concordia’s ‘natural expansion,’ as defined by Kalafatidis, was foreshadowing a potential campus of its own; yet, hopes of achieving it went down.

“Ideally, Concordia will buy more in the area and slowly build what McGill already has: a campus of our own,” said Kalafatidis. “And now instead of getting more campus, or maybe green space where students can hang out, we’re getting a giant building.”

In an interview with CTV, Kalafatidis said the CSU is willing to take action and escalate the situation to the municipal government level. They are also hoping Concordia will join forces in the cause.

Photo by Kayla-Marie Turriciano

A closer look at the role of student journalism in the SGW Affair

With the Sir George Williams Affair, one tends to think about the riots, the violence and the destruction of property, amongst other things. The Affair took place between Jan. 29 and Feb. 11, 1969, when students overtook the seventh and ninth floor computer centres in the Hall building. The students occupied the centres to protest anti-black racism in classrooms. It started as a peaceful protest, but turned violent after the riot police got involved, and was later classified as the largest student occupation in Canadian history. According to CBC, about 200 students occupied the computer centre for roughly two weeks, and on the day of the police riot, 97 arrests were made.

Most accounts of the events that took place focus on the occupation, the involvement of the police, and the destruction of the computer centre that resulted in $2 million worth of damage. While we can expect there to be more to the story than what’s available, what most often don’t consider the integral role that student journalism played in the SGW Affair. The Georgian, the student newspaper at the time, was there from the beginning, covering the events leading up to the Affair, giving readers a more complete version of what happened.

A pop-up exhibition in the CJ building’s media gallery is a continuation of the Protest and Pedagogy event series. Photo by Victoria Blair

As a continuation of the Protest and Pedagogy event series that was held from Jan. 30 to Feb 16, a pop-up exhibition in the media gallery of the CJ building on the Loyola campus offers a glimpse into these events from a different and more personal perspective.

“It was a very important part of the whole process,” said Christiana Abraham, curator of the pop-up exhibition and a Communications Studies professor at Concordia. “It played an important role in mediating and reporting on what was going on during the occupation, and before the occupation started.” The Georgian acted as a platform to send a clear message to large numbers of students, similar to today’s social media. Its writers were authorized to go in and out of the occupied spaces, allowing them to report on the events as they were happening.

This archival material included a lot more information than the mainstream press; it often offered more details and context about what was really happening. Our perception and remembrance of the events might have been different if the mainstream press had included these details.

The SGW Affair took place between Jan. 29 and Feb. 11, 1969. Photo by Victoria Blair.

“It offered a different narrative of the events,” said Abraham. “It’s given us other kinds of truths and representations as compared to the historical narrative that we have.” The representation of the events portrayed by the mainstream press did not include many truths like this. They did not accurately portray the students and their frustration, the solidarity between them and the strong female roles that came out during the event.

“The mainstream press made it out to appear as if it was a very racialized event, between black and white,” added Abraham. “But when you start looking through these archives, you come to see that there was a lot more solidarity than we have come to know.” The Georgian published the names of all 97 students who were arrested and went on to add how a majority of the students arrested were white. These 97 names included the names of some of the women involved in the Affair. One of the women arrested was Anne Cools, one of the protesters who later became the first Black person to be appointed to the Canadian Senate.

“I was really impressed with the professionalism of the student press at the time,” said Abraham. “Even fifty years later, they are a very important source for us. They gave us an inside view of what was going on that the mainstream press didn’t offer.” The pop-up gallery presents visitors with a new and more intimate perspective on the events that took place 50 years ago. The CJ building media gallery is open to visitors from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. until March 29.