Five hundred grams of green peas lay in an unopened bag.
On the back, the bag contains preparation instructions that, if followed correctly, could mean enjoyment of such delicious organic green peas is five minutes away.
But the front of the sealed pea bag includes an important warning.
“Keep frozen,” it reads in bold, capitalized letters.
At Ryerson University, a group of engineering students recently adopted this cause, parading through the streets on March 27 to campaign against the threat of unfrozen peas.
“What do we want? Peas! How do we want them? Frozen!” they chanted, carrying signs urging the public to “Freeze the Peas.”
The Ryerson Engineering Student Society (RESS)’s frosh orientation committee organized the rally. It parodied the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) “Freeze the Fees” campaign to stop rising tuition costs.
The event also raised about 150 canned food items for Ryerson’s student food bank, according to RESS president Urooj Siddiqui.
“Freeze the Fees sounds great in theory and RSU have many valid points, however they do not have a good approach,” Siddiqui said in an email, pointing to an instance in September 2014 when an RSU protest interrupted an Ontario government speech on campus. “Our current student union spends a lot of time, money, and energy into this campaign, and we believe there is a better way to go about this.”
She said about 70 people attended Freeze the Peas. Some were dressed in full pea pod costumes, while others wore shirts adorned with the title of the rally on the front along with “the fridge is opening” on the back. Many were armed with “Freeze the Peas” signs, or other creative variations, such as “You want a peas of this?”
Some student leaders didn’t find the rally funny. RSU community services director Alfred Lam called those participating “outright cold-hearted, senseless, and immature” in a Facebook post.
“Making a joke out of an honest campaign that sheds light on increasing student debt, inaccessible education, and food insecurity is absolutely disgusting,” he wrote.
The rally received similar backlash at the RSU’s semi-annual general meeting on April 1.
But Matthew Smith, a second-year computer engineering student who took part in Freeze the Peas, said the intention wasn’t to mock student debt.
“We thought that it would be kind of hard for us of all people to be making a mockery of student debt when we’re the ones who typically have the most,” he said. “We didn’t expect them to react as negatively as they did.”
Smith said many engineering students use the food bank on campus and the rally was meant to support this cause.
He also said the event showcased the spirit of Ryerson’s engineering students. Following the march, the students stacked the cans they had raised into “pea-ramids” in front of the student centre. The cans included classic green peas, in addition to black-eyed peas, and chickpeas.
“In terms of the kind of peas, we later found out that the person that did the shopping just looked at the labels on the cans and didn’t check to see if they were actually peas,” Smith said. “About half the stuff ended up being beans. Even though it’s called chickpeas or something like that, it’s actually part of the bean family, which is just kind of bad.”
Despite the mix-up, Smith said he hoped the group achieved its goal.
“It was actually fairly cold at one point,” he said. “I know we were kind of freezing at one point, so maybe the peas might have started to.”
