"The secretariat is undergoing a review and trying to come up with guidelines that would help students understand when they can or can not use the name 'McGill' in a particular club," Mendelson said. "The university has been quite liberal; it's in our interests to have a variety of student activities and it's in the interests of students to have these activities."
The aim of changing student clubs' or services' names is to clarify that services organized by students are not provided by McGill University itself. For example, Walksafe is not a university-run service but a student-
volunteer service.
"They don't want to see the services that SSMU runs to be called 'McGill'," Kosman said. "They would rather it would be called SSMU. Things like McGill First Aid and McGill Drivesafe make the university uncomfortable. The [McGill administration] thinks that [by changing clubs' names] they will make clear to people what is McGill and what
is not."
Kosman expressed several concerns with this proposal, the first being that if student organizations try to interact with the community outside McGill, "SSMU" would be an unrecognizable name.
"Most members of the outside McGill community don't know what SSMU is, so if these services are trying to get themselves out there, they are going to have a hard time doing so," she said. "People aren't stupid; when a group of students comes up and says 'Hi, we're 'McGill Drivesafe,' I'm sure they don't look at this group and say 'Oh wow, these must be administrators.'"
Kosman also has concerns about the administration's attitude toward the matter.
"[The administration has] a philosophy [that] the students are not McGill," she said. "I think it shows a tremendous amount of bad faith of McGill towards its
own students."
Clubs and Services Representative to Council Dave Schecter reflected similar feelings to those of Kosman.
"McGill is not a brand; it's a community. Students, just like professors, just like administration, make McGill, and for them to decide when we can use the name just doesn't make any sense," he said. "If we were to reverse roles and tell McGill that SSMU owns the right to reserve the word 'students' at any time, they would look at us like we're ridiculous, but that's exactly what they're doing."
One concession Kosman made was about using "chapter" in club names. Many clubs at McGill are in fact part of larger organizations.
"[With] something like UNICEF McGill Chapter, or Cancer Society McGill Chapter, I don't really see as much of a problem, seeing as they literally are chapters of larger organizations," she said.
Samantha Cook, U2 English literature and sexual diversity studies and Queer McGill member, stated, "It is just a name, but at the same time we're obviously part of the university. We live our lives at McGill. The fact that they get to pick and choose who uses the name is kind of discriminatory, maybe not in theory but [it] could be in practice."
Mendelson, however, argued that the administration will try to be as liberal as possible when concerned about clubs' use of the McGill name.
"We want to have a system or a set of guidelines that will seem reasonable; that is the goal," he said.
2008 Woodie Awards
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D. B. O'Connor
posted 10/16/07 @ 10:46 AM EST
As a former McGill parent I receive your newsletter. I am from Cambridge, MA in the US. It is an interesting issue for universities. About 30 years ago one of our local schools worked with a startup Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) to provide managed care for employees. (Continued…)
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