Grab your signs, strap your shoes, and shout to the heavens: it’s time to march!
On Feb. 1, The Day of Action for university students all across Canada will have students marching up to their respective places of provincial government (in our case, Queen’s Park) to demand reduction of tuition fees, financial understanding from the government and the abolition of student interest.
The question, though, is does the government really give a shit if we march or not?
Despite the yearly event, tuition fees always increase and students crumble underneath their financial debt. In the recent year, tuition fees have increased by 4.3 per cent. This reality has been a sad yet accepted one for the past years.
Yet with the idea of a tuition decrease becoming less of a reality with each passing day (take a look at the controversy over the tuition grants that happened this year) we still decide to march with an idea of serving justice to the government.
The idea that rallying one day a year with “our hearts on our sleeve” will achieve our ultimate goals of a tuition freeze grows more ridiculous.
YFS has plastered posters around campus reading “What has Protesting ever accomplished?” with inspirational words like “Change only happens when you demand it.” These apparently student-rooted “changes” include “tuition fees frozen in New Brunswick,” “elimination of interest on student loans in Newfoundland and Labrador,” “30 years of tuition fee freezes in Quebec,” and “ $410 million in Ontario needs-based grants.”
Half of these victories involve other provinces, making the effect of Ontario student activism meaningless in these events. Though in the future, students may end up scoring victories, previous aids that we once had will only diminish, such as the Queen Elizabeth II scholarship, Textbook and Technology Grant, and the Ontario trust for student support.
Although students may have demanded it, these demands were ultimately granted by the government. No matter what we do, want, or desire, it has to go through them. More importantly, that one step of progress is really only another form of loss, forever keeping the so-called progressive movement in a state of stasis.
The Day of Action has morphed itself into a public relations spectacle where the government and the CFS give students the idea of a voice, when in reality no matter how loud we shout, our voice will always be filtered.
Instead of achieving progress, it is a back-and-forth game where each side takes away something from the opposition. But for now, on this one day of hope and promise, we stand in protest, learning critical public relations strategies at their finest.
Wayne Hudson
Sports and Health Editor
