In this issue //sports

Stingers soccer in review p. 15

life arts

Dune: The movie that never was p.9

music

Mac De Marco Profi le p.12

Language shouldn’t affect vote p. 15

theconcordian.comWe tell your stories. Follow us on Twitter: @TheConcordian

Dr. Goodall visits Concordia p. 5

opinions

Volume 31 Issue 27 April 1, 2014INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER AT CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY. SINCE 1983.

theconcordian

Photo by Nathalie Lafl amme

You’re poorer than you think

Tuition fees have increased but universities remain underfundedNATHALIE LAFLAMMEProduction manager

Tuition fees have been indexed. Tax credits for university students have been slashed by 12 per cent. Uni-versities across the province remain underfunded. And yet, the pots and pans have stayed in kitchen cup-boards.

In previous years, any person studying at a postsecondary institu-tion was eligible to get a tax credit of 20 per cent off their tuition fees. This rule also applied to any exams that cost money, and the amount could be transferred to parents or even grandparents.

As of this semester, the rate has changed. The government lowered the tax credit to eight per cent.

For a Concordia student in the Arts & Science faculty, taking fi ve classes per semester, tuition fees amount to $2,224 per year, according Continued on P. 3

to Concordia’s tuition fee calculator. Twenty per cent of that amount rep-resents a total of $444.80. Eight per-cent of the tuition fees, on the other hand, amounts to $177.92.

This means that, this year, stu-dents will get $266.88 less back from the government than they did last year. Over three years, this lowered tax credit rate will cost them a total of $800.64. This new rate will be ap-plied to tuition fees from the semes-ter that started in the winter 2013 semester.

To most students, this represents a lot of money. For the government, it will amount to a ton of money. According to a document published by the CQFF (Centre Québecois de formation en fi scalité), this change should bring $61 million to the gov-ernment of Quebec between 2014-2015, and $78 million in 2018-2019.

The PQ has stated that the money they get from this cut will be reinvest-ed into loans and bursaries.

“The decrease in tax credits as-

sociated with tuition fees in and of itself looks like it would be bad for students, but I’ve heard many people involved in student governance ar-gue that, since the money is being re-routed through loans and bursa-ries, it might actually be benefi cial in the long run,” said current Concordia Student Union President Melissa Kate Wheeler. “The CSU is obviously op-posed to any funds, be they through tuition itself or tax credits, being tak-en away from students. However, for this particular issue, it may be a little more complex.”

In 2012, tens of thousands of students lined the streets of Mon-treal to fi ght the proposed tuition fee hike. This period in Quebec’s history is known as the Maple Spring. The Quebec Liberal Party’s original plan was to increase fees by $325 per year over fi ve years. After students acted out, the Liberals changed their plan to an increase of $254 over seven years, with an indexation of tuition. Regardless, students continued to

march in the streets, banging on pots and pans.

The original plan would have cost a student completing a three-year un-dergraduate degree $975. This tax credit cut will cost the same student $800.64.

Léo Bureau-Blouin was president of the Féderation étudiante collegial du Québec (FECQ) and one of the leaders of the Maple Spring protests. He is now the PQ candidate for the Laval-des- Rapides riding, and be-lieves this cut in tax credits will be benefi cial to students.

“Since fi nancial aid for students constitutes a more effective tool than a non-refundable tax credit when we are trying to facilitate access to educa-tion, I believe that this measure will be benefi cial for the students who need it most,” Bureau-Blouin said.

According to Philippe Ghayad, an economics professor at Dawson Col-lege, cutting from tax credits was not a smart move.

“The tax credit is a benefi t, es-

pecially for those students that need it. It is trying to make tuition rates more progressive,” Ghayad said. “[The cut in tax credits] is not very progressive, because it will hurt low-income students more than others. Tax credits have a way of balancing costs in favour of those that have low-incomes.”

Concordia President Alan Shep-ard believes that this cut is a good change if it means more students will have access to loans and bursaries.

“It’s an interesting public policy decision because, I’m not in the gov-ernment, but what I assume they are trying to do is … [funnel] additional support to students of more modest means, that’s the ambition. I’m an advocate for people of modest means having an opportunity to go to university,” Shepard said.

This cut will not change the fact that Quebec universities are under-funded.

Student funding// NEWS

3 TUESDAY, MARCH 25, 2014 //

Why indexing tuition fees won’t fi x funding problemsContinued from cover

“Whether or not you agree with the hike or other types of funding, the problem is that our universities are underfunded. We, as students, know that,” Cameron Ahmad, a Concordia student and president of the Young Liberals of Canada in Quebec, said. “The equipment we have, the resources we have, they’re good, but they’re not as good as they could or should be.”

Ghayad believes that, economi-cally, the original tuition fee hike plan made more sense.

“The Liberal plan makes more sense to me. It is more progressive than the PQ plan…Low tuition rates are like subsidizing the rich since they can afford to pay more. Adjust-ing tuition rates with tax credits, loans and bursaries gives an incen-tive to low-income earners to con-tinue their studies,” Ghayad said.

Ahmad believes that the prov-ince’s youth needs to speak up.

“If we look at the facts, if we look at the consequences it has had on people, it’s a tuition in-crease regardless. I think, just as young people, we need to speak up against this, and we need to make sure that people are aware,” Ahmad said. “This is the most blatant type of hypocrisy in politics right now, and they shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this. We, as young people, should remind the popu-lation that when a politician says something, we should hold them to account for it. And we shouldn’t let them get away with trying to slip us a fast one.”

Although students have not tak-en to the streets, many Quebec uni-versity rectors have protested in their own way. Fifteen Quebec university rectors, led by Guy Breton, president of l’Université de Montréal, took out full-page ads on March 17 in both The Gazette and La Presse, demand-ing that the next elected government increase university funding to the Canadian average by 2020.

According to Statistics Canada and the Canadian Association of University Business Offi cers (CAU-BO), student funding for universi-ties, per student, is currently $10,844 in Quebec. In the rest of Canada, the average is $15,798.

Shepard was one of the rectors who signed the ad. The idea behind it was to bring attention to the fund-

ing gap.“What the rectors want, and

what they’re worried about, is how to lead a university network across Quebec that is as competitive as it can be with other institutions out-side of Quebec,” Shepard said.

“We want, not surprisingly, the best kinds of education we can offer students. When the students arrive here, we want them to have equal opportunity with people in the rest of Canada…and it is diffi cult to de-liver on all of those initiatives, all those ambitions, if the per student funding is substantially lower.”

After last year’s education sum-mit, the government promised that they would reinvest $1.7 billion into universities over the next seven years. A portion of the money would help universities cover increasing costs. For the other portion, the schools would work with the gov-ernment in order to decide where the money would be invested. The money would go mostly towards academic and student services; not administration.

According to Bureau-Blouin, this money will come from the ex-pansion of economic activity and the control of provincial expenses.

Concordia had been communi-cating with the government about the funding they would receive, and about what programs would be invested in. All negotiations were put on hold when the general provincial election was called.

“Without that reinvestment … we won’t have the money neces-sary to become competitive on the North American market and inter-nationally. We’re going to struggle at maintaining our reputation and maintaining the quality of educa-tion in Quebec because our com-petitors will go deeper and deeper compared to us,” said Concordia University’s controller, Daniel Ther-rien.

As controller, Therrien works with fi nancial services and controls expenditures.

The PQ is the only party to have promised to reinvest this money into education. If they do not win the election, it is unknown wheth-er the new government will pick up where the PQ left off, or invest the money elsewhere.

“A new government coming in could change the direction com-pletely,” Therrien said.

In February, the Parti Quebe-cois announced their plan to index tuition fees, meaning that the price of tuition will increase at the same rate as the cost of living. It was re-cently decided that tuition would increase at a rate of 2.2 per cent per year, starting in the fall of 2014.

Although this will mean a little more money for universities, it will not solve their funding issues. It will essentially mean that they will now be able to afford to keep up with most of their current ex-penses, something that, when tu-ition fees were frozen, they could not do, as their costs technically increased every year.

Although the cost of living is currently increasing at a rate of 2.2 per cent, many expenses at Concor-dia, like salaries, library e-journals, and scientifi c equipment, increase at much higher rates.

“If the cost of goods, services and labour goes up by at least 2 per cent and the tuition is indexed by 2 per cent you haven’t done any-thing to fundamentally close the gap with the rest of Canada. You’re maintaining status quo. As a gen-eral rule of thumb, infl ation in uni-versities has been running across Canada about 4 per cent per year, 4 to 5 per cent per year, depending on what jurisdiction you’re in. So lets say that infl ation is 4 per cent and you have 2 per cent, you’re already losing ground,” Shepard said.

“Our internal costs, when you look at security, you look at gas, our fi xed costs, they grew at about that rate. However, the biggest compo-nent of the costs of university is sal-ary…on average [increase at a rate of] 3.2 per cent [per year],” Ther-rien said. He explained that, since the university is unionized, salaries are based on a 12-step scale of col-lective agreements. Every step on the scale means a higher salary increase every year, the minimum being a 2 per cent increase.

According to Therrien, the school’s income will increase by around $2 million because of the new indexation plan, but this will not allow the school to increase their services.

“It’s not even enough to cover our increase in costs…if we don’t grow our student population, I won’t even be able to make my costs, and I’m not even talking about reinvesting. So the tuition in-

dexation is only bringing us a cer-tain portion of the money we need to maintain the operation,” Ther-rien said.

Therrien also explained that in-creasing the amount of students at the school is not as easy as it seems, as the school needs to maintain its reputation, and can only support so many students without affecting the quality of the education being offered.

“Any money helps the universi-ty, that’s for sure. But the indexing is only giving me an opportunity to maintain what were doing. There is no growth with that, there is no reinvestment,” Therrien said.

According to Ghayad, index-ing tuition fees makes sense, since, with the infl ation rate, costs go up for universities every year. It is also logical to index tuition fees because salaries follow the infl ation rate.

He believes that not indexing tuition fees could cause “a large gap between revenue and expen-ditures for the universities. Defi cits need to be paid off by someone in society sooner or later.”

“If it were not indexed, sooner or later tuition rates would increase as they did in the past, like in the early 1990s, and it was a large jump in tuition. I think a transparent and expected increase of about 2 per cent

Tuition indexation rate

2.2% $10,844 $266.88Average salary increase rate at Concordia

3.6% $15,798 $325

University funding per student (Quebec average)

University funding per student (Canadian average)

Amount lost with tax credit cut (one year)

Original tuition fee hike (over seven years)

annually, which is the infl ation rate more or less, would be better than the possible outcomes mentioned. I think that the tax credit is going to hurt more students overall than the indexation plan,” Ghayad said.

One of the main reason Pauline Marois was voted in as premier back in 2012 was because one of her electoral promises was not to raise tuition fees.And yet, in more ways than one, the cost of superior educa-tion has increased. Ahmad believes that this whole situation will have a negative impact on how the prov-ince’s youth perceives politics.

“I think that, with this, what the PQ has managed to do is to make a lot of young people cynical about politics, because they’ve gone back on a lot of their election promises in a very short period of time,” Ahmad said. “How can young people be in-spired by politics or believe in their politicians when they’re going back on their promises?”

Two years after the Maple Spring, a compromise between stu-dents, universities, and the govern-ment has not yet been reached. The results of the next provincial election will, no matter who is elected, im-pact the face of superior education. Only time will tell whether these changes will be positive or negative, and how the population will react.

[Indexing tuition] is not even enough to cover our increase in costs…if we don’t grow our student population, I won’t even be able to make my costs, and I’m not even talking about reinvesting. So the tuition indexation is only bringing us a certain portion of the money we need to maintain the operation.

“- Daniel Therrien, University Controller

“We want, not surprisingly, the best kinds of education we can offer students. When the students arrive here, we want them to have equal opportunity with people in the rest of Canada…and it is diffi cult to deliver on all of those initiatives, all those ambitions, if the per student funding is substantially lower.”

“-Alan Shepard, Concordia President

6 // TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2014

LGBT rights // LIFE

Irish drag queen Miss Panti Bliss discussed how she is accidentally became a LGBT rights activist

NATHALIE LAFLAMMEProduction manager

Miss Panti Bliss would describe her-self as being “a national fucking treasure.”

After attending the Q & A with Ireland’s most loved Drag Queen and accidental gay rights activist at Concordia on March 25, one could not help but agree.

The talk was organized collaboratively by Concordia’s Canadian Irish Studies and Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, and ended with attendees—about 100 people—giving Miss Panti Bliss a standing ovation.

Emer O’Toole, an assistant professor of Irish performance studies, started the Q&A by remind-ing the audience that Miss Panti Bliss has been involved with gay right activism for a very long time.

Back in 1987, Miss Panti Bliss began host-ing the Alternative Miss Ireland Pageant, which aimed to raise awareness for the rape crisis, and later to raise money for HIV and AIDS. The pag-eant was open to everyone, including animals, and later became a part of the Dublin Saint Pat-rick’s day parade. Many drag queens took part in the pageant, and it became an alternate pride celebration.

“I always described the work that I do, jok-ingly, as glamour routed in despair… I am trying to say something important by using something that seems silly, like me,” Miss Panti Bliss said.

On Jan. 11, Rory O’Neill, which is Miss Panti Bliss’s given name, appeared on RTÉ’s The Sat-urday Night Show with Brendan O’Connor to discuss homophobia. While on the show, O’Neill said that some people involved in Irish journal-ism were homophobic.

After showing the room the video, a round of applause ensued.

“I haven’t seen that in months and it seems so innocuous,” she said. “I think that I was really reserved about what I said. I could’ve been a lot harder on those dicks!”

Miss Panti Bliss explained that, at first, this seemed like a situation that would make Ireland look bad.

“It looked like it was saying ‘Ireland is such a backward little shithole of a country that some-

body can’t even point out that a homophobe is a homophobe anymore in that country or they’ll be sued and dragged through the courts,’” Miss Panti Bliss said.

“However, what happened in the end was that the good, decent, ordinary Irish people were as horrified as everybody that those people would sue someone for saying that, especially when they clearly are a bunch of homophobes.”

These people, according to Miss Panti Bliss, are the reason that the movement, known as both “Team Panti” and “Pantigate,” became such a phenomenon.

In the first few weeks after the show on RTÉ, a lot of people attacked Miss Panti Bliss. These were the people who had felt insulted by what she had said. After those weeks passed, though, the Irish people took her side.

“I spent maybe three weeks being attacked…but then I spent maybe the last three months being, you know, a national fucking treasure!”

On Feb. 1, Panti Miss Panti Bliss responded to the events that surrounded the RTÉ controversy by speaking at the Abbey Theatre. The video of her speech went viral, with people from all over the world responding.

“It was outstanding to me that Irish people cared. But it absolutely blew me away that peo-ple in bloody Montreal, Canada give a shit about this.”

According to Miss Panti Bliss, less than half of her fans were LGBT people. Many were people who apologized for how they had treated LGBT people, others had gay siblings, many were in wheelchairs or had Aspergers syndrome, and felt that they were treated in a similar way as the gay population.

It was astounding to her the amount of peo-ple who cared about the speech she did on such a specific issue.

In the speech at the Abbey Theatre, Miss Panti Bliss spoke of some issues gay people deal with on a daily basis, a few of which she consid-ers her dirty little secrets. One of these was feeling

embarrassed when friends publicly “acted gay.”“Here am I, a 45-year-old drag queen, who’s

made a living doing this for the last thirty years, I own a fucking gay bar, and I’m still embarrassed sometimes by how gay my friend is in public. I thought that that was my dark little secret and it turns out that every single gay in the world some-times feels that. That blew me away,” Miss Panti Bliss said.

O’Toole then showed O’Connor’s apology, done on behalf of RTÉ, which aired two weeks after the show had aired. The original interview had been taken off of RTÉ’s online archive. Although Miss Panti Bliss hated the apology, ‘Pantigate’ would never have become what it is without it. RTÉ paid the people who had threat-ened to sue. Since RTÉ is publicly funded, it paid

them with taxpay-er’s money, which angered people, and gained Miss Panti Bliss more support-ers. Miss Panti Bliss believes that, had RTÉ not payed off the people named in the interview, she would have been dragged through the courts. Because

taxpayer money was involved, Miss Panti Bliss’s supporters increased, and suing her at that point would have angered the population even further.

Miss Panti Bliss later spoke of gay marriage in Ireland, and of her definition of homophobia and explained that, in a way, homophobes have an irrational fear of gay people.

“I don’t think that those newspaper colum-nists walk by the hairdresser’s and shudder, but what they do have a fear of is what the world will look like, and what their place in the world will be, if gay and lesbian people are given full equal-ity... It is a fear of change. That is an irrational fear, and when you boil down it’s the same as being afraid of gay people,” Miss Panti Bliss said.

Miss Panti Bliss explained that the reason people attacked her after she called them homo-phobes was that they knew that, when the gay marriage referendum came around in 2015, call-ing someone a homophobe would make all their arguments null.

“They had to shut down any possibility that

they could publicly be called homophobes and I just happened to be the one who, at that particu-lar time, called them a bunch of homophobes,” Miss Panti Bliss said.

Miss Panti Bliss then spoke of her work with the New York City Saint Patrick’s day parade. Gay people are not allowed to participate in the parade, and every year, many public spats take place about this.

“I think that homophobes are particularly an-noyed when a bloke in a dress calls them out on something. It always reminds me of the power of drag. There is something incredibly powerful about not gender conforming. It freaks out ho-mophobes.”

“They don’t go after the gay guy in a suit and glasses, they don’t go after the lesbian in the three inch court heels and nice skirt, they go after the lesbian with the butch haircut and the leather jacket and they go after the gay guy in a dress.”

About 15 years ago, an alternative parade called the St. Pat’s for All Parade was created in Queens, NY. The parade got a lot of attention this year, as the mayor of the city and the entire city council refused to walk in the mainstream pa-rade. Twenty members of city council walked in the alternative parade alongside Miss Panti Bliss.

At the end of the Q&A, the floor was opened to the audience who shared their personal stories with Miss Panti Bliss, and asked more questions about ‘Pantigate’.

The event ended with a standing ovation, with people lining up afterwards to go meet and personally thank Miss Panti Bliss.

All eyes will be on Miss Panti Bliss, and on Ireland, as the country heads into its gay marriage referendum next year. Miss Panti Bliss hopes that ‘Pantigate’ will impact the referendum’s results.

“While I don’t want to overemphasize what’s happened recently or just sort of have an overly optimistic view of how things might change it is possible that this stupid ‘Pantigate’ incident could actually change everything for gay people. I’m not saying it is going to happen, but it’s possibl.,”

“Ireland is [so small] that a single incident could have a massive effect... I could hope that that is the case, not just for gay and lesbian people, but particularly for trans people. At the moment it seems like an important moment for them. And I would hope that maybe this could be a time for them that could dramatically change everything in Ireland.”

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR EMER O’TOOLE (LEFT) ASKED MISS PANTI BLISS (RIGHT) TO TELL THE AUDIENCE MORE ABOUT HER EXPERIENCE OF BECOMING AN ACCIDENTAL ACTIVIST. PHOTO BY NATHALIE LAFLAMME.

How one drag queen is ending homophobia in Ireland

I think that homophobes are particularly annoyed when a bloke in a dress calls them out on something. It always reminds me of the power of drag. There is something incredibly powerful about not gender conforming.

“- Miss Panti Bliss