Students trash newspaper over military ads

Kelly Ebbels, The McGill Daily

MONTREAL (CUP) — Students at McGill University are protesting military advertisements in one of their campus newspapers by ripping out the pages and bringing them back to the editors.

The McGill Tribune, which ran advertisements for the Canadian military two weeks in a row, was the target of student activists who tore the advertisements from hundreds of copies of the newspaper and delivered them to the Tribune’s newsroom.

Students also delivered a letter to the Tribune demanding that it stop printing military advertisements, or the papers “will be disposed of immediately and readers will not get a chance to read them.”

The McGill Tribune’s editor-in-chief, Tiffany Choy, said that the Tribune’s editorial board could control advertising policy, but it cedes discretion to the paper’s advertising manager, an employee of the university’s students’ union.

“I can see where they’re coming from, but I don’t think it’s really a big deal,” Choy said.

“Canada’s a big country that does have an army.”

Michael Freeman, a social work student who participated in the action, said that the students would like to work with the Tribune to boycott the military advertisements.

“[Advertisements] take advantage of the fact that most students are in debt and are vulnerable,” he said. “We’d like to see [the Tribune] stop tacitly supporting the Canadian military.”

Tessa Vikander, another McGill student and a staff member at rival newspaper, the McGill Daily, said that the students involved in the action may consider bringing the military advertising issue to a SSMU general assembly.

But, she said that she hoped the Tribune would simply stop printing military advertisements.

“It could be that simple. If they do [continue], we’ll see how people act,” Vikander said.

Choy added that the Tribune is willing to talk to the students about why military advertisements should be banned from their paper.

The McGill Daily boycotts advertisements from the military, pharmaceutical companies and oil companies. Le Délit, McGill’s French-language weekly, does not have a boycott policy.

Neither does the Manitoban.