STUDENTS DESERVE A FAIR SOLUTION

“I respect the students

for their willingness to stand up for what they

believe in.”

As

I was making my way home from work a couple of weeks ago, I saw a young man sitting in the métro, wearing the red square that symbolizes support of the student strike.

The red square is meant to symbolize that many students are in debt and “squarely in the red.”

As I looked at the expressions of some of the other passengers, I thought that it takes a certain amount of courage to publicly show your support for a cause you believe in.

We live in a country that values freedom of expression but also political correctness.

It might not be in your best interests if you are climbing the corporate ladder to wear a red square to the company picnic.

I would be nervous about wearing a red square on the West Island commuter train. It isn’t a popular position. Maybe if I was commuting from the east end, things might be a little different.

I understand that our government needs funds and that the cost of a university education in Quebec is relatively inexpensive. I am not against raising tuition fees. Our roads and bridges are crumbling, our health-care system is struggling, water mains are bursting and we don’t want to pay more taxes.

But I feel that to increase the fees so dramatically all of a sudden is arbitrary and unfair.

Most of my friends graduated from university many years ago and the argument I hear often is that “tuition rates haven’t changed since I went to school.”

To me, this argument is not convincing.

If we benefitted from low tuition fees, why shouldn’t today’s students also benefit?

Rates should have kept pace with inflation and gone up a couple of percentage points each year. To decide that students entering university in 2012 should pay 70 per cent to 80 per cent more than those who graduated before feels wrong.

To be fair, we should go back to when the tuition freeze began and calculate how much the rates should have gone up to keep pace with inflation, and ask all university graduates to contribute what they should have paid.

Of course this is next to impossible.

I don’t have the answer but I believe that our government has the responsibility to stay at the table and come up with a fair solution, not repressive laws.

I have heard people say that the students are hurting themselves by losing a semester, but won’t this also hurt businesses who will have to wait to hire these graduates?

We have passed the 150th day of the largest and longest student strike in Canada’s history.

I respect the students for their willingness to stand up for what they believe in.

The students have earned a place in our history books and I am interested to read the end of this chapter and see what they will do next.

Perhaps when they finally graduate and enter the workforce, they will take on corruption and taxes. I look forward to the possibility of wearing the symbol of that movement.