LETTERS

Exception taken

I must take exception to the last line of the article "Endowment Fund is Tops" (Fall '95) which reads, "The RIAL Fund does not currently help pay off the McGill deficit though the McGill Board of Governors is looking at various ways that it might do so."

The Financial Report to the Board of Governors 1994-95 states that an amount of $3,863,000 was obtained from endowment funds (Part B, 2.1.7), and this is in addition to the six percent service fee that has been paid on endowments for some years now plus a new two percent fee introduced this year. The two percent fee increases to10 percent over the next four years. Moreover, Vice- Principal, Administration and Finance, Phyllis Heaphy stated in the Senate meeting of September 27, 1995, that the University plans to obtain another $10 million from endowed funds over the next five-year period.

R. Rigelhof
McGill Professor of Mathematics

Date questioned

I must say I do enjoy reading the News, particularly the rather sardonic items included in the "A Medley of the Man . . . James McGill" (Winter '95). However, as a born and bred Montrealer, I was quite puzzled by the brief note on the Faculty Club, and the statement that it was sold to McGill in 1935. While on sabbatical (working at McGill) in 1971, I invited my father down to the Club for lunch a number of times. On the first such occasion, he remarked that: yes, it was the old Baumgarten mansion, the first private home in Montreal to have an elevator, and that Mrs. Baumgarten sold it to McGill after the death of her husband when McGill wanted a "good house" for the new "principal and vice-chancellor, Sir Arthur Currie." Currie served in that role from August 1920 to his death in November 1933. Just when McGill bought the house I cannot say, but it clearly was long before 1935. Mrs. B. also told dear old dad that she sold it to McGill for $22,000 and then went down to New York and bought each of her two daughters an $11,000 diamond necklace (probably at Van Cleef's).

Gerald McCaughey, BA'51
Association of Professors Emeriti
University of Alberta

McGill's historian, Stanley Frost, replies: Gerald McCaughey is right. This fine mansion was built in 1887 and enlarged in 1902. Baumgarten died in 1919, but his widow lived in the house until 1926 when it was sold to McGill, and Principal Sir Arthur Currie occupied it as his official residence. His successor, A.E. Morgan, deemed it too large and costly to run and the Faculty Club "inherited" the building Christmas 1935.

Pot's history

TThe unfortunate experience that Melinda Wittstock, BA'86, had with the Plumber's Pot ("McGill Daily Editors Resurrected," Winter '95) prompts me to write about the original Plumber's Pot.

Jim Harris, BEng'49, was president of the Engineering Undergraduate Society when he asked me to write an information column for student engineers in the McGill Daily.

Since engineers called themselves "plumbers," the title Plumber's Pot was chosen and Tex Dawson produced the cartoon and masthead (a homemade still). It was a fairly innocuous column, peppered with corny jokes and inane observations. The worst that couldbe said about it, to quote one of the higher ups at the McGill Daily, was that "it didn't meet the literary standards of the Daily."

Imagine my astonishment to find, years later, that the Plumber's Pot was a newspaper of controversial nature, to say the least. For my efforts in producing this column, the Engineering Undergraduate Society awarded me a "special mention." Would it be stretching it a bit to say that the Plumber's Pot started as an award-winning column in the McGill Daily in 1948-49?

Bernard Lang, BEng'49, MEng'53
Mayor, Cote Saint-Luc, Que.

Repressed temptation

I didn't think it was possible to make an old McGill Daily veteran dissolve in nostalgia, but your cover story (Winter '95) with venerable Gerald Clark rubbing shoulders with some young upstart did just that! I repress the temptation to reminisce further. Thanks again for that delicious and well thought out feature.

Hayim Perelmuter, Arts'35
Professor of Jewish Studies
Catholic Theological Union
Chicago, Ill.

Daily's defence

It may interest those students and alumni who enjoy trashing the McGill Daily to know that I once counted myself among them. During my first year at McGill, I would sit back at Detour or Doug Pub with friends and discourse at length about the paper's failings. Finally, one of my friends looked at me and said: "Talk is cheap. Either you go write for the Daily or shut up about it." I signed up.

Suddenly, I found that I had much less time for Detour and Doug Pub, or even my classes, as I raced around tracking down sources for stories and features and spent many a late night struggling with our antiquated typesetting software. I served with editors Melinda Wittstock and Joe Heath, and was part of the Daily staff that was impeached in the referendum Melinda Wittstock mentions (Winter '95). Not one person who voted to impeach us came to join the paper. I think they missed a real opportunity to learn about the paper and themselves. Like my friend said, talk is cheap.

J. Peter Nixon, BA'88
Washington, DC

Marxism, the status quo

I felt a mixture of pride and embarrassment as I read the other editors' vignettes. The Daily taught me most of what I've ever needed to know about writing, publication design, staff management and budgeting. I also learned about group politics, which leads to the embarrassing part: I fell in with the Marxist-Leninists on the Daily and produced an insufferably strident newspaper. Later I realized that Marxism-Leninism was just another status quo. I've since worked for The Gazette and other newspapers, produced publications for three universities, and founded two award-winning periodicals on health. But I remain a gadfly. I've objected to, for instance, the cynicism of my media colleagues and the ties of mainstream medicine to the pharmaceutical industry. I lead a so-called alternative lifestyle, with children born at home, meatless meals and homeopathic health care. So the Daily taught me to question the status quo and to fight for change. But it also taught me, belatedly, that nobody and no system has all the answers.

Bonnie Price Lofton, BA'75
Daily Editor, 1974-75
Castleton, Va.

Marginalizing who?

I enjoyed the story "McGill Daily Editors Resurrected" (Winter '95), but I am disappointed that you had to end the section on such a sour note, with the comments by Joe Heath. He makes several quite inaccurate statements.

Conventional wisdom has it, as Mr. Heath states, that "McGill students were a pretty conservative bunch." It is true that the loudest voices on campus have always been the more conservative ones: indeed they have the means to ensure they are heard. I started at McGill two years before Mr. Heath graduated and have always reveled in the rich diversity of the student body. And this is where the McGill Daily plays a vital role: catering to this diversity by offering something for everyone.

Further, it is an exaggeration to call the politics of the Daily "ultra-leftist" as well as to say that "the paper has become quite marginal on campus." The Daily covers a wide range of issues and this comment does a disservice to its staff. Undeniably, its editorial slant is left of centre and therefore a long way from the conservative right: the origin of these crises of marginalization. However, I ask, who is in fact marginalized?

Stephen Targett, BMus'93
President
The Post-Graduate Students' Society of McGill University

Seeking truth

The article "Requiem For Religion" (Winter '95) needs an immediate amendment sent to all recipients. It is unthinkable that the complex factors before you can be reduced to money. Such myopia! All university degrees are not self-liquidating investments. There is no way that graduates of the Faculty of Religious Studies could be expected to generate self-sustaining faculty revenues! At worst, your rationale should provide for all Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry surplus amounts (that exceed the targets) to go to faculties whose vocations are inherently not focused on career revenue.

Professor Doug Hall suggests that the quest for usefulness has overtaken the quest for truth. If true, does this not alarm you? Frederick Lowy, BA'55, MD'59, Concordia University's rector, said in his installation speech, "First and foremost, it is time for universities to retrieve their courage and return to the business of transmitting values."

Our daughter Loretta graduated from McGill in 1990 and subsequently died of suicide. It is not unlikely that truth in a BSc degree did not deal enough with ultimate truth. We believe that the spiritual development of McGill students is absolutely essential. Without a sense of how the divine works in our lives, we cannot find the true purpose and true meaning in our lives. I attended McGill's new student orientation in September 1993 and heard of the continuing occurrence (and warnings) of the serious medical problems that confront McGill's "Cream of the Crop."

I am enclosing my 1995 McGill Alma Mater gift in the amount of $700 for the Faculty of Religious Studies.

J.W. Tremain, BEng'55, BA'80
Part-time student
Religious Studies, 1993-95
Montreal

Trivialize promiscuity

In general, I find the articles in the News interesting, informative and well written. I do, however, have one specific complaint to make. The photos of the "drag queen" RuPaul (Alumnotation,Winter '95) hurt many people. It hurt me to see essentially erotic photos in a publication from my Alma Mater. The photos hurt women in that, although the model is a man, the image portrayed essentially promotes the idea that women should be viewed as sex objects. The photos also hurt the fight against AIDS. They trivialize or even glorify sexual promiscuity, yet unwise sexual involvement is the cause of many, many cases of HIV infection every year.

And what about RuPaul? In what way has McGill University improved his life by focusing on the fact that he has the ability to dress like a stripper? It's not funny.

Mark McBratney, BSc(Agr)'85
Montreal

ed. note: RuPaul is an active supporter of AIDS research and helps numerous organizations throughout the world to raise funds for AIDS community support programs and research. It was never the intention of the McGill News to trivialize the role of women or to promote unwise sexual involvement. As you may know, the McGill AIDS Centre has been very proactive in promoting informed, safe sex. It is perhaps unfair to state that RuPaul has been "used" by McGill University. RuPaul craves and appreciates publicity, and has used this publicity to help fund AIDS research.

Feat of the gods?

I never can resist looking at old manuscripts, so when you included an extract from the will of James McGill (Planning Giving Profile, Fall '95) I took a close look. To my surprise, it was dated 30th December 1813, or 17 days after Ol' Jim died! Since the signatures don't appear to be his, could we be looking at some lawyer's or executor's papers instead? The mystery deepens.

Michael Attas, BSc'73
Pinawa, Manitoba

ed. note: The extract of James McGill's will is from the McGill Archives' copy of the document. It is the notarized copy that was presented for probate December 30, 1813, and that is the date that appears therein. The signatures appearing in this extract are those of his executors. Thank-you for the assiduous reading of the McGill News!

Focus on the athlete

I was delighted to read your story "The Alchemist" (Fall '95) about Richard Pound and the International Olympic Committee. I remember first learning about Richard's swimming successes in the summer of 1962. I was a 10- year-old water enthus-iast at the time and spent most of each summer day swimming in the clear waters of Lake Massawippi, Quebec. Each evening at the cottage, the radio was switched on for the evening news on CBC, and for a whole week I was mesmerized by the Commonwealth Games sports reports coming out of Perth, Australia. Of course, Richard's name was featured almost everyday as he earned those four medals in swimming for Canada. In recent years, I have been aware of his ongoing contributions to sports through the IOC.

The amateur sports scene in Canada and internationally has changed both subtly and drastically since the innocent, halcyon days of the early sixties.

Women's swimming has been affected by two waves of systemic doping since Richard'sdays in the sport, once by the East Germans in the 1970s and 1980s and more recently by the Chinese in the late 1980s and early 1990s (19 positive steroids in four years). In spite of documented cheating in women's swimming for the past quarter century, Canadian female swimmers may not find a level playing field (pool?) provided for them this summer in Atlanta, if the IOC and swimming's governing body FINA do not act quickly to clean up the sport of swimming.

Our daughter, Jessica Amey, is one of Canada's top five swimmers heading down the road to Atlanta in the summer of 1996. She needs to know that, as Richard Pound says: "the focus is still on the athlete" in the Olympics. She needs to know that Richard Pound, as the next possible President of the IOC, is using the same attributes and skills ("tough, no-nonsense, single-minded, powerful, enormous influence") for the direct benefit of the competing athletes, and not only to "handle fat contracts" and wring a public apology out of Quebec Premier Jacques Parizeau. She needs to know that athletes' concerns are not fourth or fifth on the list of IOC priorities. She needs to know that Richard Pound and the other IOC members are proactively doing everything in their power to ensure that Atlanta is drug- free. Richard Pound is very clear that boycotts are "demoralizing to the youth of our country." Richard Pound now has a wonderful opportunity to again provide leadership to the world sporting community, this time on the ethical issue of doping. When he does, he will indeed be "one of the most remarkable people in the world of sports."

Mary Jane (Walker) Amey, BA'74
Allan Amey, BEng'71
Calgary, Alta.

Avoid stereotypes

Congratulations on the fine article "Witness to War" (Fall '95). However, the card reproduced on the contents page promotes the stereotype of Ukrainians persecuting Jews. (It has the Ukrainian Trident on it.) Such things ought to be avoided!

V. Rev. Dr. Ihor G. Kutash
Montreal

ed. note: The identity card in question belonged to one of the interviewees, Freda Schipper, and was important because it showed her to be a non-Jew, which helped save her life. We used this authentic document, now found in Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, to illustrate the times, not to promote stereotypes.

Met Boyd?

In my research for a book on Erroll Boyd, I wish to contact anyone who met him or his navigator, Harry Connor, who were helped by McGill students in September 1930 during their enforced delay in Montreal. Please telephone me collect at (514) 388-7445.

Ross Smyth
Montreal

Corrections, Update, Clarifications

We humbly have some clarifications to the "McGill Daily Editors Resurrected" (Winter '95). Here they are: Nesar Ahmad, who died tragically in a hijacking, never did actually graduate from McGill; Ely Raman's editorship was in 1953, not 1954-55, and we would have done well to mention that he went on to become Art Professor at Rutger's University for 12 years. George Kopp was the editor in 1975-76, not 1971; and Rosemary Oliver did submit that she was co-editor with Rick Goldman, and the McGill News omitted this fact. So, to her friends, stop bugging her! Finally, the idea for this whole feature came from Lori Yersh, BA'87, MEd'92, Annual Fund Officer.


The McGill News reserves the right to edit letters.