On March 20, students across the province walked out of their classes in protest of the Ontario government’s changes to tuition fees and the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) announced in January. At least 17 different campuses—including Carleton University—across the province took part in the walkout.
The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) and Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) organized the walkout for Carleton.
At Carleton, over 100 community members—from current students to alumni—took part and gathered in the library quad to protest the new tuition and student loan policies.
Frequent cheers from the crowd included “hey hey, ho ho, the attack on students has got to go!”
David Oladejo, CUSA president, addressed students, saying that the walkout is a call to action to tell students that these changes are “detrimental” and urged students to not let their activism end when they leave the quad.
“We’re talking to you and letting you know things that you can do, actions that you can take to hopefully get these changes reversed so that our education and our lives as students can always be for the better,” he said to the crowd.
Jensen Williams, campaign manager for the CFS, said the walkouts across the province today is about telling the Ontario government that “we’re not going to accept these changes.”
She said it’s important that after these walkouts and rallies, that smaller student organizations across the province keep the momentum and conversations going.
At Ryerson University in Toronto, hundreds of people reportedly participated in the walkout. Ryerson Students’ Union also participated in the walkout and closed its office at noon. Some opposition MPPs were also supporting students. Joel Harden, NDP MPP, was at the walkouts in Toronto supporting students.
“Standing with students and workers during today’s province-wide walkout against Ford’s cuts to post-secondary education,” he tweeted, along with photos.
Some students are concerned with the cuts to OSAP since the financial buffer it offers is important for students who want to volunteer or intern in their field for experience.
Maheep Sandhu, president for Student Energy Carleton, said if he didn’t receive OSAP, it would have been a lot harder for him to go to university in the first place.
“I would have had to do some minimum wage jobs,” he said, “and because of that I wouldn’t have been able to make the connections I needed to get jobs that actually helped me with my career.”
For Sonja Peters, a second-year English student at Carleton living with a disability, said she won’t be able to afford two more years of school because of the province’s decision to slash the free tuition program.
“Because I’m disabled, I need to take a lighter course load,” she said.
This means that Sonja needs take an extra year to finish her program comparatively to others attending the university.
Prior to the changes passed this January, Sonja was able to get enough grants to cover most of her tuition. The changes “makes it so we’re not able to get any more grants than we do loans.”
“That will dramatically decrease the amount of funding I will be able to accept and receive, and because of that, I won’t have enough funding,” Peters said.
Students being affected by the changes to OSAP were not the only ones present at the walkout. Some were there in solidarity.
Winston Mavraganis, a first-year humanities student at Carleton, was attending on behalf of his friends who will face difficulties in the light of these changes.
“They aren’t able to come to school with these OSAP cuts that are going on,” he said, “and I can see the effect it’s having on them. They’re not able to pursue higher education because of this, so I want to be here for them.” θ
—With files from Camila Giudice and Grant Vassos
Image by Spencer Colby
