Criticisms are mounting over student financial aid policy supported by both the UNB Student Union and the New Brunswick Student Alliance.
A newly-formed student group called the Coalition for Accessible and Affordable Education hosted a “Slash Fees Forum” on Monday, where a panel of students and faculty discussed the effectiveness of current student financial aid policy.
Approximately 50 students and faculty members attended the forum in Tilley Hall.
The forum was moderated by SU science representative Alex Corey and featured SU Renaissance College representative Matt Abbott and Graduate Student Association VP External Neil Cole as speakers, among others.
The UNBSU and NBSA’s financial aid policies include advocating for a $6,000 per year debt cap on government student loans, as well as cancelling the provincial government’s current tuition freeze in order to reallocate funds for high-needs students.
Abbott was critical of the process by which the SU decided their policy, which he said offered too little time for student input.
Policy development through national and provincial lobbying groups “needs an accountable process with ample time for constituent consultation and engagement,” said Abbott.
“Not at this year’s Student Union,” he continued. “It hardly seems that the UNBSU acts more than a rubber stamp ... We cannot accept the motion on provincial financial aid policy as the voice of students.
“We need to engage in discussion like tonight to make sure we are more than just a mouthpiece.”
Cole, a graduate political science student, spoke at length regarding income-contingent loan repayment (ICLR), a program that is in place in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Britain in various guises. While such programs allow individuals to pay off their student loan debt at a rate related to one’s income, he argued that they essentially condemn students to a “debt sentence” just by attending post-secondary education.
In some nations like Australia, said Cole, the ICLR program is in place as a funding mechanism for the post-secondary education system and not specifically for the aid of students.
The NBSA advocates for a loan repayment assistance program, which is similar in some fashions to an ICLR program in that it proposes that no person should pay more than 20 per cent of their income at a given time on loan repayment.
“I propose a continued freeze on, and reduction of, tuition fees,” said Cole. “A freeze must be accompanied by increased funding to post-secondary education in this province.
“We don’t want debt caps, we don’t want ICLR, we don’t want loans, so if we pressure our provincial and federal governments, we can make them stop cutting funding to post-secondary education,” he continued. “If we lobby our governments for money to put back into post-secondary education, we can reduce and eliminate tuition fees, not just freeze them.”
Speakers also included UNB Education professor Emery Hylsop-Margison, STU Social Work professor Suzanne Dudziak and single mother Anne-Drea Allison.
When the floor opened to questions after the forum, discussion centred largely on the financial aid policies of the UNBSU and NBSA. NBSA President Duncan Gallant and UNBSU VP External Jon O’Kane, who were in the audience at the forum, soon began to field questions of their own regarding their organizations’ policies.
After some time of dialogue between the policymakers and their dissenters, Phil Ouellette, a former national director of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, spoke for the need of a unified voice to attain progress.
“There’s an ongoing struggle in student movements of people defending what organizations they’re a part of. The one thing I think is important is that people should be talking together,” said Ouellette.
Dudziak echoed Ouellette’s statement.
“I understand the dynamics of being part of a movement, and working out these inner struggles around issues if there are different ideological stances,” she said.
“You’re all going to continue to lose unless you see that the picture is bigger, the issue is bigger, and you have a wonderful opportunity to come together around the issues.”
Having attended the forum, I'd like to point out in response to this comment that Mr. Ouellette was not the only one that called for unity. Both professors in the forum said students needed to work together because this in-fighting is something that makes it easy for the Government to sit back and do nothing.
As for a comment about CASA, they aren't even involved in this discussion, as far as I can tell.
It's good to hear that there are students in NB critical of the policy decisions taken by the UNBSU and NBSA. A lack of student input is certainly detrimental as well as the policies promoted by these two organizations.
But beware of the calls for "unity" from the former national director of CASA. CASA was, after all, a split engineered from CFS in 1995 when CFS held a student strike which helped defeat Axworthy's attempt to implement ICLR. The role of the New Brunswick Liberal Party was to put up the money to hold CASA's founding convention. For all the accusations of CFS being "too political", CASA was political at its outset given its strong ties to provincial and federal Liberal parties.
It's fair enough to say that unity is required but certain political forces in the student movement, forces affiliated with certain political parties, are not interested in unity when it comes to building student unions and larger student organizations that act independently of whichever political party is in power to advocate policies of tuition fee freezes/reductions and debt relief. Unity is a necessity but so is bringing these political issues out into the open. To ignore them or to wish them away is to bury one's head in the sand.
Post new comment