BY PATRICK LEJTENYI
Published February 11, 2010 in The Montreal Mirror
Campus peaceniks at McGill are preparing for war. The casus belli: weapons research done by the university’s scientists that will now be unrestricted by a 23-year regulation designed to make such research transparent and open to public scrutiny.
The McGill Senate, comprised of faculty and student representatives, met this week on lifting the regulation, which the university says would place it on an equal footing with other research institutions in Canada and the U.S. Nikki Bozinoff, a 22-year-old organizer with Demilitarize McGill, was pessimistic. She says the recommendations by the student senators, who generally backed keeping the regulations in place, were “ignored” by the rest.
“If it passes, we will be back to square one,” she says. “There will be no transparency or regulations over research that is receiving military funding. The regulations have been in place since 1987.”
Among some of the weapons systems being researched at McGill are thermobaric explosives, better known as fuel-air explosives. Fuel-air explosives are considered more effective than traditional explosive fragmentary ordinance against bunkers, trenches and caves. See demilitarizemcgill.wordpress.com for more info.
