CSU’s Anti-Hike Campaign Will Do More Harm Than Good

OpinionsAlex Woznica — Published January 31, 2012

This March, Concordia students will vote whether to go “on strike” to combat tuition fee increases. This will be the climax in an academic year that has seen the CSU engage in an intensive campaign against the hikes.

Despite the folly of trying to fight against a budget that has already been voted in as legislation by the provincial government, the CSU is arming itself with language that is likely to eliminate any chance of ameliorating the situation. 

The most obvious problem with the CSU’s campaign is that the tuition increases in question are quite reasonable. Tuition in Quebec has been frozen for most of the last 45 years.

The increases, which will increase by $325 a year for five years, will, adjusted for inflation, bring provincial tuition back to 1968 levels. As well, Quebec students will still be paying some 30 per cent less than students in the rest of the country.  

Regardless of whether the CSU feels the tuition increases are reasonable or not, the fact is that they are happening. They were voted in as part of a legislated provincial budget this past March, which makes them extremely difficult to reverse.

Any change would have to occur in the realm of Parliament or the courts, and certainly not in that of student—or even public—opinion.

In leading the charge against the tuition increases at Concordia, the CSU has coerced people into believing that these protests have the possibility of reversing the tuition increases. The CSU needs to be more honest with the people it is supposed to be representing. 

Student groups across the province, including the CSU, are still riding high after the 2005 student victory against a government plan to cut $103 million from the bursary budget. But a tuition increase and a decrease in bursary money are not the same thing.

The hikes will generate badly needed funding for universities; funding that could very well be directed towards bursaries. If anything, the immature language that the CSU campaign uses to aggravate our government might jeopardize the likelihood of the government increasing those bursaries that they fought for almost seven years ago.

The Charest government could very likely be persuaded to make massive increases in both the availability and amount of student loans and bursaries that would allow more students to attend, rather than fewer, as the CSU’s campaign suggests.

That would go a long way in eliminating any negative effects created by the increases. Unfortunately, the CSU has gone out and begun what amounts to a malicious campaign of intimidation against the provincial government.

From the “Fuck Tuition” events at Concordia’s Reggie’s Bar that see the desecration of Jean Charest in effigy to the plan to jam the fax and phone lines of the provincial government, the CSU seems dead-set on creating a situation where the provincial government will be as unwilling as possible to give students a helping hand. 

In failing to accept what appears to be the new status quo of slightly higher tuition, and in deceiving students into thinking that this can be easily changed, the CSU is doing a great disservice to Concordia.

They need to stop making matters worse by using language and tactics that are likely to alienate the very government body that students need on their side in order to best cope with that new status quo.