Student Protest Update

Continued action against tuition hikes gets students fined, banned, and bruised.

In the last issue we got you up to speed with student protesters at the Universities of Guelph, Toronto and York. If you didn’t get a chance to read it, here’s the short version:

Mike Harris: “Hey, those kids have had it good for too long. It’s time they started paying up for that post-secondary education. How does an extra 10-20% sound?”

University Presidents: “Ok.”

University Students: “Damn you, Harris. You’re always trying to pin us down.”

Here is the update. Following the largely successful and widespread presidential-office-occupations (in which students stormed and occupied University President’s offices across Ontario), Guelph University waited for its Board of Governors to vote on the proposed tuition hikes. When it became apparent that the motion would be passed, students inside the meeting began reading out the names of 3000 students who had signed petitions against the tuition hike. 35 students who had been waiting in a stairwell outside the meeting took this opportunity to storm past the police guards and take control of the meeting. Once inside, the students passed several mock-‘motions’ which froze tuitions, lowered administrative salaries, and banned multi-national corporations from the campus.

The students held the board room for 8 hours before being strong-armed out by police threats of charges. 35 of the students were charged with "failure to leave the premises when ordered" - a non-criminal charge carrying a $65 fine. They were also banned from the University Centre, a hub of student political and cultural activity, which I imagine would be the equivalent of being banned from the cafe. Currently, the banned students are resisting the charges, although it is not clear exactly what action they plan on taking.

As it stands, the student protests have done little if anything to stop or even delay the tuition hikes. Their actions do, however, help to keep this issue in the public eye.

• The University of Toronto students have put together a website documenting their protest. Also, visit their Occupation Links page for more student protest info on the web. Special mention goes to the University of Western Ontario's Virtual Sit-In - very cute.