Activist Thoughts

The latest issue of Five Minutes to Midnight reminded me of the big (?) CFS/"Freeze Tuition Fees" Student Rally that was held on Thursday. The crowd was decently sized, though nothing to write home about. It was at least a lot more substantial than the rather pathetic turn out to the rally held the other year, where a few brave (foolhardy?) souls set about trapsing about campus holding up blue and yellow CFS placards in the middle of a fierce blizzard with temperatures in excess of -20 degrees. At least it looked a lot more credible than the silly "Car Free U of T" band of kids who screamed "The planet is dying/Why are the fuck are you still driving!?" at me and a few hundred others waiting outside SAC to get our metropasses.

Yeah, because naturally of course, TTC riders are the most egregious offenders when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions from driving cars around.

I passed by the parade with an aire of indifference, or rather embarassment, actually. In the space of four years I've run the gamut of activist emotions from "enthusiastic world-changer" to "angry, pissed-off right-wing hater", to "oppressed, secretive freedom fighter". I look back at the voluminous Land Mines/Unexploded Ordinance project I did for Students of Science for Peace or the twenty-page paper I did on Global Warming and Extinctions for IIP and I can't believe that I could have put so much effort and and time into something that had no appreciable and immediate impact on my academic future. It's like some sort of dream, like being in the middle of the anti-war protests and just soaking up the incredible vibe that was in the air...I feel like I'm stuck in the middle of the opening sequence to Fahrenheit 9/11.

I wish that I could have had some kind of motivation to join that parade that day, but for all of the screaming and chanting and slogans being uttered, I had to wonder if there was something more. Yes, I'm sure everyone and their mother would love lower tuition fees, but where will the rest of the money come from? It would be great to have a model like Ireland, where taxation is high but social programs are relatively intact, and free - including university - but such change isn't going to happen overnight, and there are serious issues that need to be considered. Like what about research? Hiring professors and staff? Facilities like Joker's Hill and UTIAS don't come cheap, and the world-class cutting edge research (and yes, it is world-class cutting-edge research, marketing drone BS aside) being done at the unversity certainly carries a heavy price tag.

I don't pretend to know anything about the university's funding model, but what I do know for sure is that screaming out "Reduce Tuition Fees!" is a hollow statement unless you really sit down and understand just what it is you're fighting for. The Federal and Provincial Government surely must step in and increase funding for our universities, but what about social programs? What about addressing issues of the environment? What about global and international aid?

And then of course, there's the question of where we get the money in the first place? Tax the rich, right? Maybe I'm just too jaded and cynical now, especially after what happened with SSfP last year, but unless we have something along the lines of the French Revolution, it's unlikely that we're going to have the rich dump out their coffers to help us poor struggling, university students.

Which brings me to another point. As I said before, the government will most likely if not begrudginly step in to increase university funding if these people get what they want. This will lead to two possible consequences. First, money that could have gone into other projects and programs, like say, environmental protection/remediation and affordable housing will most likely be diverted to make up for the loss in funding. I don't know about those guys, but I'd feel pretty awful if I knew that funding that could have helped keep the homeless people off the streets was instead used to fund my education.

The second is that the government won't step up to the plate, and private industry will. I can imagine that the elements at SAC trying to remove or minimize corporate influence on campus is going to have a blast when Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Eli Lilly, MacMillan-Blodel, Union Carbide, and just about every other evil multinational corporation you can imagine under the sun is going to start knocking on the doors of the Office of the President with truckloads of cash in tow. Maybe I've read too many issues of Adbusters, but I don't want to even think of what's going to happen if that happened.

Oh, and I forgot the third possibility, actually. That Dalton McGuinty isn't going to give a damn about any of this. Neither will the university Governing Council, and the status quo will remain just that.