Which way to the day of action?
Or when did student protests go to pot?
EVAN JOHNSON STAFF
The Day of Action! Sounds fun, doesn’t it? Sounds like you just might need a condom. Sounds invigorating and important, the sort of event you can’t afford to miss, random complacent student; the sort of thing that has free tofu dogs; planned for the coldest day of the year, windchill be damned, to bolster the metaphoric resonance of the precious Day’s prevailing imperative: freeze tuition! Keep tuition increases sub-zero. Ice to see you, low tuition. And so on.
And it’s National! From Victoria all the way to one of those Maritime cities (the one that’s farthest East), students will be braving the cold, demanding that powerful politicians and the powerless electorate alike stave off political inertia, get up off their comfortably numbed asses and say “hey . . . there’s some people shouting in front of the legislature again.” As organized by the Canadian Federation of Students (Canadian post-secondary students’ very own Catholic Church, with tuition freeze as “the Word”), the Day will see the participation of millions, maybe even billions, of Canadian students, ranging from the downright rabid to the drooling and half-asleep.
But there are doubters. Yes, these crotchety fussbudgets, many of whom (not coincidentally) occupy cushy posts in university administrations or at ham-fisted campus newspapers, have to take issue with anything that anyone does, ever, the Day of Action being no exception. These scrooges claim that university (in)accessibility is a multi-faceted problem that results from broad societal tendencies (class stratification, inadequate primary and secondary schooling, systematic discrimination, etc.) and cannot be fixed merely by skipping school and shouting glib slogans, or, more importantly, by lowering or freezing tuition.
Some Day-of-Actioners (or “Accionistas,” as I like to call them) might agree with all this, but would claim that tuition freezes force governments to confront funding problems. They might, too, point to the situation in the magical land of Europe, where, in many countries, universities are so heavily statefunded that students pay little or no tuition. Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Finland, Germany, Austria, and more: all feature free university education.
Though this isn’t comprehensive proof that Canadian universities could easily and un-problematically eliminate tuition, it is seen as a beacon of hope; and I don’t know or care enough about the workings of the economy to figure out why Canada cannot/will not implement such a system, but I do suspect that it isn’t currently politically viable to do so. What is viable is for you to move to Europe if you think it’s so great, traitor.
So, assuming that the Day in question is simply an attempt to draw attention to an important issue — a general lack of government funding for universities and a general electoral apathy regarding the subject — there isn’t much of a problem with the Day of Action, at least in terms of its purported intent.
Certain compelling problems do come to mind, however, when one peers beyond the Day of Action’s surface intentions and gazes into the complex machinery of its actual potential effects; namely, that tuition freezes benefit coddled and undeserving students like myself, whose generous parents could easily afford modest yearly increases in tuition. This goes against the instincts of the little armchairsocialist in my head who wants desperately to distribute my parents’ money (though not mine) evenly amongst all the people of the world. Isn’t there some way we could do this that wouldn’t benefit assholes like me?
There is also the problem of the protest’s potential counter-productivity as a public relations move. To illustrate, allow me to make an unflattering and (admittedly) unfair comparison: consider the yearly April 20 protests/drum-circles concerning marijuana legislation, which pretend to have a coherent and constructive “message” but are merely shabby celebrations of that beloved drug’s degrading effects on the minds and hygiene of our youth.
Don’t get me wrong: I like pot more than you — but the ramshackle nature of the protests, and the fact that their constituents are, more often than not, stoned and skipping school, have always seemed to warrant more of a “hey you kids, get off my lawn!” than a “hmmm, this thoughtful demonstration of unkempt and inebriated youths demands immediate political action.” Which is to say that such protests do nothing to drum up support for the “cause,” but instead elicit a range of negative responses, from quiet disapproval to reactionary, Sunsponsored rants.
Fortunately, the situation is not so dire for the Day of Action. There will, no doubt, be certain annoyed and offended parties, who will dismiss the whole affair as “a bunch of whining,” but if the Day can muster enough student support and appear generally eloquent, well-organized, and intelligent, then, who knows, they just might come out on top. For my part, being nothing if not overly sensitive and easily befuddled, I’d like to stand somewhere in the middle of this confusing pantomime, mocking everyone but secretly crying softly to myself, wondering which way is up.
