Written by Dan Howse
“Regardless of your personal stance, to suggest either party has not actually made an impact to the things students care about is simply facetious.”
I bet I can find 18,000 people that don’t actually care.
The other day I was invited to join a Facebook group “I bet I can find 1,000,000 people who still dislike George Bush.” If some researcher were to take group memberships as any indication of actual preferences, values and commitments, they would probably consider our generation fairly politically concerned. In between supporting their friends’ mediocre bands, attending snowboarding trips and spreading the gospel of Chuck Norris, these researchers would believe that University of Guelph students were legitimately politically aware. However, this awareness frequently does not translate into activity.
Over the last several weeks, the Ontarion has been running a series of articles about student apathy towards their government. In a response back, a reader wrote that “maybe students would pay more attention to the CSA and CFS if they did something to improve the world, instead of getting caught up in their own self-importance of their own bureaucracy.”
While it certainly is easy to see the recent de-federation process as being a clichéd example of irrelevant bureaucracy, I feel this claim needs to be addressed on two levels. Firstly, as the Ontarion has tried to make clear, the CSA has been involved in protesting for causes both practically and morally relevant to students. Whether it is for lower bus pass pricing or helping to create a less discriminatory campus, many initiatives led by the CSA and the CFS have helped to shape the friendly, accessible, safe university so many of us know and love. Regardless of your personal stance, to suggest either party has not actually made an impact to the things students care about is simply facetious. Unfortunately, disputes over resource allocation and representation are merely necessary evils within a democratic system.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the reader claimed that if these groups were more actively involved in bringing about social change, students would pay more attention. Unfortunately, my own recent experiences with protests have led me to believe the contrary. As some of you may remember, last week I wrote a piece about the screening of a documentary dealing with the 2004 coup d’etat that Canada helped support in Haiti. If students were really concerned with making a difference in the world—or at least investigating what actions their tax dollars had helped contribute to—you would think they would have shown up. After all, the event was at 1pm; while I’m sure a few students were still nursing hangovers, a number had already been to the Farmer’s Market and back to cook breakfast. However, while the cinema was fairly full, there were maybe 10 people under the age of 30 there and I’m fairly sure that less than five university students. There was a friend of mine I had mentioned the documentary to who happened to be doing a project on Haiti, there was a girl he brought along with him, and there was his friend visiting from out of town. There was also a farmhand I knew, our local CUPE representative, a young mother with a newborn baby and yours truly. For those keeping count, that’s four students.
Whether you agree or disagree with the policies Canada has implemented in Haiti, there is undeniably no link between Haiti’s abject poverty and the extreme devastation caused by the earthquake. If you really dislike George Bush or believe Stephen Harper doesn’t represent you, do something about it. Leave the house, log off Facebook and make an actual difference in the world.
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