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The baby boomers -- nearly seven million of them in Canada -- were starting families of their own. Those born immediately after the baby boom -- the demographic group originally dubbed Generation X by author Douglas Coupland -- would soon be starting university. The "Me" decade had begun, and stories of greed, insider trading, Reaganomics and big business would dominate much of the '80s in the media. |
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The McGill News had many other interesting stories to tell, but unavoidably reported on how the times on campus were indeed a-changing once again. And one couldn't help but wonder whether they were changing for the worse:
 McGill students embraced the athletics boom of the '80s, including the onset of the aerobic revolution. |
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"With pre-exam pressures building up amid piles of paper, electronic calculators, and empty styrofoam coffee cups," reads the Spring 1981 News in an article on students of the day, "three fatigued MBA students were asked why they had enrolled in the program. One said the degree was 'just a piece of paper that gets you promoted faster.' Another explained that an MBA would enable them 'to get ahead of all the other graduates with a BSc or Arts degree.' This point of view, common at McGill today, betrays a new pragmatism and cynical competitiveness that an earlier generation of students would have found distasteful."
Still, this decade at McGill would usher in many big issues, and while some students may have worried what model of BMW they would be driving after graduation, many were starting to think globally, well before the term became fashionable in the '90s. International protest against apartheid in South Africa found a fertile base on university campuses, and in 1985, prompted by vocal student and faculty disapproval, McGill became the first university in Canada to divest itself of South African-related investments.
The blossoming of the digital revolution was changing the way teaching, research and administrative work was done at the University. "Terminals linked to the main computer facility in Burnside Hall now extend to virtually every part of the campus," read the June 1983 issue of the News. There was also alarm at this new era of the microchip and automation. Citing sources such as Labour Canada, the News reported concerns that "computer technology is posing a threat to employment, especially in clerical sectors where women have traditionally predominated."
In the Summer 1984 issue, the magazine celebrated 100 years of women at the University, looking at McGill women through the ages, from early October 1884, when the "first women students were permitted to attend their classes cloistered in the Redpath Museum," to the post-liberation '80s: "Many women students today balk at being called a 'feminist,'" according to an article called 'Post-feminism and the campus.' "Others react with ambivalence, accepting the label apologetically or with certain qualification."
The Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agree-ment would also get its share of coverage in the magazine. Chief Canadian free trade ambassador Simon Reisman, a McGill economics and political science graduate, told the News of the controversial agreement, "I don't believe for a moment that this country's sovereignty is at stake or that our social programs are at stake or that we're going to lose our virginity in some way. I have no doubt that we are a mature enough country that we will not risk our sovereignty or our independence. There's no way I would recommend an agreement that jeopardized those things."
The News of the 1980s would also feature articles on the rise of biotechnology, the fight against an arms race that was spinning out of control, the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing through the eyes of a faculty member and a graduate, and the mobilization against a new, terrifying plague: AIDS
