Stir It Up!: Campaign of the Week

I don’t know of any campus that doesn’t gripe about its food service. Too often, conglomerates such as Chartwells and Aramark take over campuses and provide 1, substandard food at 2, overpriced costs to 3, poor students. Said students, forced to find employment due to unreasonably high tuition fees, are then paid minimum wage and given minimum rights in a frequently non-unionized environment.

Universities make deals with companies like these without consulting the student body despite complaints about the quality and cost of the food. Often this is a first-year student’s only recourse, living in residence and a meal plan that is deceptive of what the food is really like.

Enter the Stir It Up! Campaign. It’s cool because it makes a co-ordinated effort for Canadian students, both employees of campus cafeteria and its consumers, to get together and discuss the problems that lie with corporate food service. In many ways, Stir It Up! represents the unity of students and workers on issues – since, in this case, they are actually one and the same group at risk.

For more information, check out http://www.stiritupcampaign.org/.

Keep fighting the good fight!

- JP

 

They’re at it Again…

It seems like the Communitards have recruited a new ally in their fight against the Canadian Federation of Students: the radical left.

Campus Conservative Watch‘s latest article, “So Left, They’re Right” discusses their “Open Letter” in its own words, and unmasks it for what it is: thinly-veiled Tory Tot regurgitation.

Whereas many right-wing observers make criticism of Tory-organised anti-CFS witchhunts sound like there’s a nefarious, abstract boogie man behind the scenes, the fact is that’s the truth. His name is Stephen Harper.

Who are the Communitards, you ask? What are their nefarious plans for putting student activism on campus on life support? Stay tuned for more!

- GPS

Harper’s “Economic Action” Plan Solidifies Concept of Students As Workers

One of our readers, Joanne, told us about a billlboard posted on the University of Ottawa campus this month in front of a construction site (a hint to its appearance: our version follows below).

The University is erecting a new building.

Now, we all know that action against the recession is founded in support for vulnerable sectors, like recently-laid off workers – hence the flashpoint issue of employment insurance to parliamentary survival.

However post-secondary education, the Right tells us, entails some sort of “private gain” that doesn’t materialize when we graduate – or for that matter, anytime soon afterwards. We students are supposed to recognize that we are “investing in our future” by struggling through school and living paycheck-to-paycheck, even years after we graduate.

So why is Harper trumpeting the Economic Action Plan’s “investment in Canada’s post-secondary institutions” by putting up one of his many signs in front of the university’s new building, like the one to which Joanne tipped us off?

Why does post-secondary education have any place at all in the Conservative’s recession-beating plan – something which flies in the face of Tory ideology and priorities?

Perhaps, if emergency recession funds (though tokenistic in size) are being allocated to universities, there is a greater connection between students and the workforce than many people give it credit for.

I suppose that, if even Stephen Harper can’t ignore it (though I’m sure he wishes he could), I hope that the postsecondary funding crisis gets the budgetary attention that it deserves in 2009.

-GPS

Strength in Numbers in the Student Movement

We here at WSU were all very excited to hear that John Milloy was present at the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario’s weekend general meeting for a lobbying session viz. the province’s impending release of a renewed post-secondary education strategy.

The presence of executive members from the over-thirty students’ unions represented by CFS-O meant that the Minister was able to hear how, all across the province, tuition fees are creating unjust barriers to education. I’m sure if Milloy does his math, those schools represent about 300,000 university and college students from across the province.

All Carleton, University of Ottawa, and La Cité collégiale students were represented at this meeting, and, frankly, it makes me happy that we’re adding our sway to the collective leverage of most of Ontario’s post-secondary students.

So much better than trying to go it alone…

- GPS

Why I Wish I Was A Student in the 1970s.

A lot of feedback in the past week has focused on the nature of the post-secondary educational system, so I thought it best to address some of your questions.

It has never been more difficult to be a student. Whereas we hear a lot of talk about the benefits that we should be deriving from a university or college degree, in many instances this just doesn’t jive with reality. In fact, the opposite usually occurs: graduates are faced with five-figure student debt, sometimes non-governmental loans that have been accruing “wicked high” (in academic ‘a lot of’) interest, and jobs for graduates are paying less and less.

So why is the Government continuing to raise tuition fees?

One explanation follows the increasing rate of enrollment in post-secondary institutions. If we use this indicator as a benchmark, we could potentially imply that access to education is increasing. However, we know – as they do – that the crux of the problem lies with two factors:-

1. The province is shifting the funding burden to the student.
2. The per-capita funding for post-secondary students in Ontario is the lowest in the country.

The government expects us to play a bigger part in funding our education, completely disregarding dozens of examples of places, both in Canada and abroad, that education can be both affordable for the student and of a high quality. The list is substantial, and will be published soon in an entertaining manner.

Further, the money being allocated to students is the lowest in the country. Our province is the most industrialized in Canada – 70% of new jobs require post-secondary education – yet the Province isn’t investing the money to ensure that we can afford to be adequately qualified for said jobs.

The contradictions in policy and reality are embarrassing.

Why do I wish I was a student in the 1970s? Simple: Dalton McGuinty, our Premier, was. His law degree was so cheap in comparison to ours that he could work through the summer, at that era’s minimum wage, to pay for the entire school year. I wish it were so simple these days. Nowadays a law degree at U of T costs about $20,000 per year. Accessible? I think not.

Education is a right – and a necessity for our continued success as a society.

As always, keep your comments flowing; we’re in this together.

Look forward to some exciting goings-on around the University of Ottawa campus next week.

- GPR

STUDENTS VICTORIOUS IN TRANSIT AGE CAP STRUGGLE!