It Worked in BC—It Will Work Here
The notion that Concordia students should capitulate and quietly welcome a 75 per cent increase in tuition fees is bewildering.
Labeling awareness campaigns as “folly” does little beside degrade students who are fighting for what they believe to be honestly unjust. Aspirations to deter student activism by claiming the increases as “fact” or near impossible to reverse should only galvanize Concordians into action.
Public opinion, in theory, defines the parameters within which Parliament should operate. Student opinion is public opinion, and public opinion does matter.
On the belief that people are being “coerced” into misleading understandings over the power of protest, I assume students have the ability to think independently, and, if willing, can search for their own accounts of its effectiveness.
In British Columbia, the Liberals, who had formerly disapproved an implementation of a new tax that would see student tuition fees raise 7 per cent, followed it, once back in office, with plans to force an entirely unexpected HST tax on the public.
This deceitful action again called for the wheels of public participation to turn. British Columbians began various awareness campaigns for the need of a referendum.
Students with their boots on the ground were instrumental to getting petitions signed and finally, after six months, a referendum was called. The tax was repealed!
The moral of the story is that without active involvement, nothing would have changed, and students, along with the public, would be paying for it. I’m sure during the heat of such contentious issues, questionably “malicious” tactics were employed against Gordon Campbell and the Liberals, but only to reflect the nature of the situation.
To wind up, a great Naomi Wolf quote seems fitting: “Activism is the rent we must pay for the privilege of living in a democracy. Protest is how you pay your civic rent.”
—Terry Wilkings
BA Political Science
