The Canadian Federation of Students – Ontario (CFS-O) hosted a town hall meeting about post-secondary education with the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) at Carleton Sept. 25.
The meeting was one of many hosted on university campuses across Ontario, aimed to craft a response to a discussion paper recently published by the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. The report, a vision for the future of post-secondary in Ontario, failed to raise certain key issues, according to the CFS-O.
The town hall featured open discussion on a number of hot topics for both graduate and undergraduate students, such as tuition fees, lack of accessible facilities, and the existence of racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination on campus.
The event was not attended by the Carleton University Students’ Association.
CFS-O chairperson Sarah Jayne King said student union support has been a staple at other town hall meetings across Ontario.
The event attracted around 20 students to the Tory Building, many of whom voiced their concerns over the direction of post-secondary education in Ontario. CFS-O plans to tabulate all of these concerns into a report it will submit to the Ontario government at the end of the month.
“We’ve spent September going all over campuses across Ontario, hosting these town hall-style talks… It’s a good way to get all the perspectives, in order to say with authority ‘this is what students want,’” King said.
While the discussion covered many topics, the need to lower tuition fees was a common theme throughout the afternoon. Students in Ontario pay the highest average tuition in Canada, according to CFS-O.
King also criticized the 30 per cent tuition reduction grant offered by the Liberal government, calling it “misleading.”
