Doug Ford’s Tuition Plan Is an Attack on Students, Protesters Say
Credit to Author: Emma Sandri| Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2019 15:41:04 +0000
“What’s disgusting? Union busting!”
Vaulted at the parliament building standing before them, the chants of students, faculty and concerned citizens reverberated around Queen’s Park in Toronto Saturday.
“Fuck Ford,” read one sign.
Organized by the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario (CFS-Ontario), the rally called for Premier Doug Ford’s government to scrap their plan to cut tuition fees by 10% while reverting to the 2016-17 Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) framework. It means students will receive less financial assistance. Ford’s plan will also see the end the six-month grace period on paying back student loans.
The specialized, local reporting that campus media offers can play an integral role in holding administration responsible when such stories go unheard by larger city-wide, provincial and national publications, said Denton.
“Chasing the truth and reporting it as such, without favour or bias, is important in a campus context,” said Erik Preston, the president and chair of the Canadian University Press’ (CUP) board of directors. “The stories that student papers are chasing are ones that will be ignored by the broader media because they largely only affect the student body.”
CUP is a national non-profit which is owned and operated by student-run newspapers all over Canada. The student news service released an official statement via twitter calling the changes to ancillary fees “a direct hit to institutional transparency.”
To Preston, on-campus press plays an integral role in ensuring that marginalized student voices are heard and their stories are told. “Without a campus press or a functioning press, it will be hard for those voices to be heard and communities will suffer as a result.”
Preston says he hopes that such media will be deemed an “essential” service for students, “I think that would be the responsible decision to make. Do I think it is the decision they will make? Probably not.”
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