Photos by Zachary Novack.

Students rallied in front of the Board of Governors (BoG) meeting March 30, calling for lower tuition and rejecting a board report saying tuition must increase annually.

The protests resulted in the postponement and eventual cancellation of the open meeting where campus safety barred entry to the public.

The Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) organized the “Tuition Fees are Too Damn High” rally. It was a response to a BoG committee report that stated the only “economically feasible” option for the university is to raise tuition fees for students next year. Members of the Canadian Federation of Students and the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa also attended the rally.

nTuitionRallyCover_2_KyleFazackerley_(WEB)Theo Hug, vice-president (external) of the GSA, said the report neglected to take into account the factors impeding affordable education.

“I think it’s bullshit,” he said. “I mean what they’re saying is that we have all of these different programs that people can take advantage of to reduce the cost of education, but that’s just the most inefficient way to fund post secondary education.”

As part of a “debt wall,” rally volunteers were asking students to write their amount of student debt anonymously on a piece of paper. The paper was then taped to the wall, before students were invited to crush the wall to get the rally underway.

GSA president Christina Muehlberger said the main goal of the rally was to make it clear to the BoG that students do not support another fee increase.

“This rally is just one more thing we’re doing to say ‘Hey, you need to reject that report, and you need to vote against a tuition fee increase,’ because students cannot afford another increase,” Muehlberger said.

Students marched through the University Centre on their way to the second floor of the River Building, where the BoG meeting was taking place.

Students were barred from entering the meeting room by campus security despite it being a public meeting. After students tried to group together in the main lobby of the River Building, next to the Tim Hortons, security barred entry once again.

After the rally moved outside, campus security blocked the automatic doors into the River Building and only allowed individual students to enter.

While outside, students threw snowballs at the second floor window where the BoG meeting was underway. After a short while, the meeting was shutdown and students from the meeting came outside.

Russell Burgess, a graduate student who participated in the task force that published the tuition report saying fees must increase, said this cause is important because education is no longer a choice.

nTuitionRally29_1_KyleFazackerley_(WEB)“In some cases, it’s a requirement to gainful employment,” Burgess said. “The less students pay now, they less they’ll pay in the future.”

Duncan Watt, the university’s vice-president (finance and administration) said this is not the first time a student protest has disrupted a BoG meeting and that he wasn’t sure whether the protest was a “reasonable” response.

“My experience, having been through tuition fee increases many times at the university, is virtually every year students in some form protest the tuition fee increase,” he said. “Most years it’s most civil than this, but it’s not that unusual.”

Muehlberger was inside the BoG meeting, but decided to join the protesting students once it became clear that the board was proceeding with the meeting.

“I don’t want to be part of a board that doesn’t recognize student experience,” Muehlberger said. “If I am there to represent students, then why aren’t they listening to students and why are they actively blocking students’ voices in that space?”

Sarah Musa, a fourth-year human rights student, said she went to the rally after being personally affected by high tuition costs.

“I come from a low income background. I’m in $22,000 of debt right now, and I’m in my fourth year. The more tuition fees increase, the more people like me won’t be able to come to these institutions,” Musa said. “If we can’t get access to educational institutions, like this, then how are we supposed to survive, how are we supposed to make a living for our families?”

Muehlberger said, after years of trying, direct action like a rally is one more way to show the BoG that this cause matters to students.

“You can try to work within the system as much as you can, you can try to have conversations with the university administration, but when those shut down and don’t work, direct action is one of the only ways we have to show that there’s 27,000 members and students and faculty and staff at Carleton that disagree,” Muehlberger said.

Hug added the rally was also a way to show the BoG that students are taking the fight for lower tuition seriously.

“We really want to hit home. We’re not going away we’re always going to be here. We’re always going to fight for accessible post secondary education,” he said.

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