Editorial: Welcome Back

OpinionsThe Link — Published September 4, 2017

We decided that in order to honour the paper’s history of providing Concordia students and Montrealers with the news and analysis that matters to them, we would have to make some changes. We would transition from a weekly newspaper into a monthly magazine. Because readers are getting more and more of their news online, we would also focus on putting out rapid-fire online content. We decided to completely change the structure of our outlet.

A few months later, here we are. You have, in your hands, the first ever edition of The Link magazine. Just like previous years, the theme of this year’s start-of-school issue is Orientation.

While putting this together, we asked ourselves a lot of questions. We wondered what you, the reader, would want to know as you’re making your way back from summer and hitting the books once again. We asked ourselves what we would have wanted to know about Concordia, and about Montreal, when we were first starting university. Then we tried to answer those questions in the articles in this issue.

How do student politics work at Concordia? How can we, as students, navigate the ever-changing city we call home? Where are some cheap places to eat, to see shows, to grab some drinks, to fix our bikes? We hope this issue will help you navigate your life as a Concordia student and a Montrealer, whether or not you’re new to the university or to the city.

With over 45,000 students, Concordia is nearly a city in itself—complete with its own institutions (some more transparent than others). We hope to demystify them as much of it as possible for you. From corporate influence on the Board of Governors to shake-ups at the Concordia Student Union to increases in your tuition, we’ve got your back as you try to make sense of it all.

This issue is meant to do more than help you understand the systems around you. We hope that understanding helps move you towards taking action to make your school and your city a better place for everyone. Because the world we live in is changing, whether or not we want it to.

We look into the ways Concordia has, or hasn’t, implemented the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, including last year’s graduation ceremony beginning with an acknowledgment that our university sits on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka land. We examine the ways that gentrification is affecting our neighborhoods, and the way that communities are working to resist displacement. We wrote a history of how working-class people in Pointe St. Charles created Quebec’s first community-run, free clinic. We hope that these stories resonate with you.

There remains much work to be done and no one is going to save us but ourselves. We hope that this magazine can help you, the reader, begin to understand the issues that affect us all, and prepare you to become active members of your communities. We also hope it can help you have some fun along the way.

Being a university student is no joke, and we know it. Throughout the coming year, you’ll have some great times, and some hard times, and you’ll do a lot of reading. So will we. If we’ve done our job right, then the writing you find between these covers can help you navigate all this.

Until next time,

Your friends at The Link