Students rally across Canada for lower tuition

If you're new to student politics, you may find it surprising that your elected student leaders and our provincial "lobby group" do not agree with lower tuition. in fact, if you read their press releases and read between the sound-byte lines when they do make the press, they do not support tuition freezes or even tuition reductions. Why, in the one of the poorest provinces in Canada, we have the highest tuition (next to NS) , highest debt loads, and our "leaders" don't stick up for students that need help the most. It is incomprehensible.

This article is from the winter of 2007, and for those who know a little about Canadian student politics, you would know that New Brunswick doesn't participate in activities like this. It's because our student unions and councils are affiliated to a different organization that disagrees with rallying support and organizing public demonstrations and protests. They feel that having meetings with elected leaders is the best way to get favours from politicians. This has been the approach of our elected "leaders" for almost 15 years now and it has not produced any tangible results or been at all effective in relieving the burden that low-income students feel.

However, in a cold windy winter day of Feb 7, 2007, UNB and St. Thomas students came out because they are sick and tired of high tuition, high debt, and inadequate student aid. It was truly a turning point for the UNB student movement, but it wasn't organized by the undergraduate student union, it was organized by graduate students. The SU executive remained safely and warmly in their offices, doing who knows what, while students marched to the dean's office at both UNB and St. Thomas, and not only that, they marched clear down to the Legislature to bang on the front doors and warn poltiicians that students are upset.

It seems pretty straight forward, but why would a graduate students union organize a primarily undergraduate rally? Seeing as how tuition is not the number one issue for grad students (it's still high on the list though). In 2006 the grad students at unb federated with the Canadian Federation of Students, the first student group in New Brunswick to do that since the mid '90s.

Seeing as how tuition is so high in NB and that student debt levels have reached record highs, wouldn't New Brunswick's CASA schools consider a change in tactics? So far, no change in tactics. What they're doing in NB doesn't seem to be working.





I think we need to see more of this in the future.

Maritime students warm to Memorial's frozen fees

Unopposed tuition hikes in NB, NS and PEI over the past 13 years have reached the point where we can't afford to go to university in our own province, we have to go elsewhere. This is the driving force behind a tuition freeze in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Our student "unions" can't take credit for this.

The question of the day is, what has the New Brunswick Student Alliance (our supposed lobby group) been doing all these years to get us to this point? Answer is, probably not much. Students and the public need to be mobilized in order to gain support for PSE policies that truly create accessibility, not just stop gap measures and hat-in-hand, yes-sir, no-sir, "lobbying" that we see from NBSA and and its member schools.

All That Was Left (1995), A history of Canada's student movement, by Nigel R. Moses,

This is the most exhaustive research done to date on Canada's student movement, more to come.

All That was Left (1995)