No plain Jane

Hailed by Entertainment Weekly as one of its entertainers of the year and touted by People magazine as one of 1995's most intriguing personalities, few would argue that 19th century novelist Jane Austen is a hot commodity indeed these days. Recent films based on Austen's books Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility have won critical acclaim, while another Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice, earned top ratings as a TV miniseries. Even Clueless, a summer hit movie aimed at teens and twentysomethings, was loosely modeled on Austen's Emma.

Jacqueline Reid-Walsh, a part-time assistant professor in the Department of Administration and Policy Studies, is a long-time Austen booster. The president of Montreal's Jane Austen Society, Reid-Walsh also moderates an international electronic discussion group devoted to Austen. Reid-Walsh's Austen listserv has profited mightily from the ongoing "Jane-mania."

"Since the movies came out, we've been getting about 30 new members a week," says Reid-Walsh, who started the listserv with the technical support of husband Michael Walsh, a manager with the University's Computing Centre.

The listserv is popular with both Austen scholars and casual fans. "It's a really good balance. Sometimes with listservs of this sort, the scholars complain about the level of discourse from the non-academics, but the quality of the conversations has been marvelous."

Reid-Walsh says there are as many reasons for admiring Austen as there are Austen fans. "I appreciate her as an early feminist. She bent the rules as much as she could at a time when women led quite restricted lives. Her heroines are lively and intelligent, but by no means perfect. She was also a wonderful stylist and she had a great sense of humour."

One popular topic on the listserv of late, not surprisingly, is the recent spate of Austen films. "Some purists aren't very pleased--but they probably shouldn't go to the movies in the first place. I think the films capture Austen's tone quite well. I even liked Clueless. But it will always be the books that I'm most engaged with."





Engineering a successful event

So how tall a structure can you build out of toothpicks and playdough when you have just 20 minutes to do it? That's the challenge being faced by a team of student engineers composed of École de Technologie Supérieure's Sylvie l'Heureux, McGill's Adrienne Bajaj, École Polytechnique's Sonia Pignorel and Université Laval's Karl Lepage.

Just one event of many for the 350 engineering students from eight Quebec universities who took part in the sixth annual Quebec Engineering Games, held at the University. McGill organizers put the students through their paces in events ranging from a talent show to math quizzes to debating contests. The main competition involved designing a machine that, without human assistance, could fire darts at one target, place an egg on another, toss a ping pong ball through a net and drop a marble down a hole. Laval earned top spot in that contest, but McGill's squad won the water polo and debating matches.

More importantly, McGill's student engineers earned kudos for their hosting efforts. "The main goal is to create bonds between people from across Quebec," says electrical engineering student and chief organizer Pierre-Luc Bisaillon. To that end McGill organizers made sure that some events--such as the one pictured above--involved mixed teams with students from different schools. "Sometimes people stick close to their school's delegation. We wanted people to really have a chance to meet some new friends." Bisaillon credits the almost 100 student volunteers from the Faculty of Engineering for making the event a success.



And debate goes on

The McGill Debating Union played host to argumentative students from across the country last week. Concordia's Daniel Nemiroff (above) was among the debaters taking part in McGill's annual Winter Carnival Tournament. Nemiroff declared that worldly possessions must be shed in order to be truly free. He then passed his hat through the audience, inviting everyone to give it a try.




Ready to rumble

If Luciano Pavarotti can make records with U2 and Bryan Adams, why can't Opera McGill stage Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story? La Presse critic Claude Gingras didn't think much of the idea, arguing that opera students should be tackling more serious fare, but other critics gave the production--which ended Monday--high marks for its energy and verve.

The ticket-buying public made no secret of its views on the production--West Side Story was completely sold out prior to the first show.

Opera professor Dixie Neill says the selection of a popular musical like West Side Story was no accident. "We feel we have to prepare our students in as many styles as possible," Neill told the Gazette.



A pride of principals

Three of McGill's principals posed together last week at the inauguration of a Visiting Professorship in Trauma at the Montreal General Hospital, established in honour of Dr. H. Rocke Robertson.

Robertson became surgeon-in-chief at the General and chair of McGill's Department of Surgery in 1959. He also served as president of the Graduates' Society and chair of the Alma Mater Fund.

In 1962, he was named to succeed F. Cyril James, becoming the first McGill graduate in 140 years to serve as principal. With supreme skill as an administrator and manager, Robertson took McGill, in the words of historian Stanley Frost, from "a one-man, benevolent autocracy to a democratically governed University."

Presiding over a period of rapid expansion, which saw McGill's physical space almost quadruple, he restructured the University's academic and administrative functions and built up the library collections. All this was accomplished at a time "of social unrest and attempted revolution unparalleled in McGill history," writes Frost. Robertson dealt with protest rallies, student sit-ins--and even brought a lawsuit for obscene libel against the Daily.

He may consider his successors' problems--mainly deficits and underfunding--to be a little tame.