Students march against cutbacks

by Barbara Black

The Day of Action held February 2 was a relatively quiet affair in Montreal. About 200 students marched through the city to dramatize their insistence that federal and provincial governments restore funding to education to its pre-1994 levels.

Elsewhere in Canada, students came out in larger numbers. Many universities experienced student strikes for the day, and about 1,500 students marched on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

Rob Green, president of the Concordia Student Union (CSU), said that another reason the Montreal turnout was low was that it was essentially English-speaking, since the francophone schools don't conform to the schedule set by the pan-Canadian student federation.

The federal government cut $3.7 billion in health and education transfer payments in the 1990s, resulting in drastic belt-tightening across Canada. The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada estimates that public funding for universities has dropped 20 per cent per student since 1992.

While most provinces have responded by precipitously increasing tuition, fees have been frozen by the governments of Quebec and British Columbia.

Quebec universities have had to turn elsewhere for revenue. Their students are concerned about increases in administrative fees and by what they see as too much corporate influence on campus. The result, they fear, will be that accessibility is reduced just when a university education is becoming more important than ever.

The Montreal march on February 2 took in a visit to the Mexican consulate to express solidarity with students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the largest university in Latin America. A strike has been in progress there since April, and there were violence and arrests on campus last week.

"The issues there are very similar, namely, raises in tuition and decreased accessibility," Green said. "We had some of the organizers here last fall during Orientation Week to talk to us about it."

Green has been able to wring some concessions out of the university administration based on last November's demonstration and two-day strike. After negotiations with the Vice-Rector, Services, it was agreed that Concordia's administrative fees will be frozen at their current $9 per credit instead of being raised to $12 a credit next year.

Student associations will also be able to circumvent the university's food services contract under appropriate circumstances, such as fundraising and social activities. A task force will be set up to look into the CSU's call for more broadly based representation from the community at large on the Board of Governors.

Like many previous administrations, however, the CSU is having problems with one of its sister associations. CASA, the Commerce and Administration Students Association, held a general meeting last week which repudiated virtually all the CSU's positions. Though the meeting was sparsely attended, CASA students supported the administrative fee and the current composition of the Board of Governors.

Green said he was barred from presenting CSU's case at the meeting, but his door is always open. "Frankly, I think the ECA [Engineering and Computer Science Students Association] is more mature. We have nearly finished negotiating a long-term services formula, and I give credit to [ECA president] Chris PichŽ for not letting political differences get in the way."

Photo:   Tom Keefer, a staff member of the Concordia Student Union, donned a mask for the Day of Action. Keefer and his colleague Rick Stom face charges stemming from last November's student protest. Their court date is in May, and well-known lawyer Julius Grey has been retained.

When the administration held a Day of Action to get a little respect

On November 17, 1987, a delegation that included Rector Patrick Kenniff (centre, waving bags of letters) and student association co-president Maxine Clarke boarded a bus to meet with Higher Education Minister Claude Ryan in Quebec City. They brought with them more than 10,000 letters of protest and about 1,000 supporters, who accompanied the delegation by bus and car.

The issue, just as it is today, was government funding of universities. By the late 1980s, Quebec universities had built up substantial deficits. Students were facing the possibility of a major hike in tuition.

What got the administration riled, though, was that the funding formula established in the late 1960s put Concordia at a disadvantage.

By 1987, Concordia had an accumulated deficit of $31.5 million, 40 per cent of the combined deficit for Quebec universities in that year. To add insult to injury, although the government gave the universities an additional $40 million in funding, only $4.8 million went to Concordia.

The Day of Action was a rallying-point for the whole Concordia community. While the delegation spoke with the education minister, hundreds of students, faculty and staff demonstrated.

Although Ryan didn't deliver emergency funding that day, the point was made. Base funding for the university was increased roughly commensurate with the other Quebec universities, and Concordia was able to balance its budget almost to the end of the most recent round of cuts. Thanks to a one-time-only grant from Quebec last year, the debt has been halved, to $15 million.