Student mobilization is key to institutional accountability

By Virginia Rufina Marquez-Pacheco – Contributor

As current events and policies develop in our world, students at all levels are seeing decisions being made about their resources and their futures without their voices being heard. Students must realize that they possess enormous power to influence university and government policy outside of the typical parliamentarian means. That power, if mobilized effectively, can send shock waves that will reverberate throughout our society.

In the past, student bodies have successfully mobilized to create tangible change in their society. A classic example is the student strikes protesting the Vietnam War that gripped the United States and culminated in May 1970. Thousands of students from across the country organized walkouts, teach-ins, and other forms of peaceful protests which impacted the narrative around the war. In the 1980s, another wave of protests emerged in North American and European universities to protest against the apartheid regime in South Africa. These student protests demanded that their institutions divest from any corporations complicit with the apartheid regime. Most mobilization efforts were successful in forcing their institutions to divest, which in turn brought pressure on governments to adopt similar measures, eventually leading to the downfall of that system.

Many examples of successful student mobilizations exist closer to home and closer in time. In 2012, after the government of Québec announced an outrageous hike in tuition, thousands of students took to the streets for six months, paralyzing not only the education system but also larger parts of society by extension. These strikes, called the Maple Spring, were successful in forcing the government to roll back on their proposed tuition hikes. The then-premier Jean Charest lost the next election. Additionally, last year, when the provincial government announced a hike in tuition for international students, Bishop’s students protested and campaigned. The result: Bishop’s was exempt from the tuition hikes.

Today, we see many things unfolding that are harming people both at home and abroad. The government is complicit in a genocide carried out against Palestinians by the Israeli state, with the complicity of several Canadian universities. At the same time, the provincial government of Legault announced a slash in spending for CÉGEPS and universities, stunting their abilities to provide much-needed infrastructure renovation. We cannot forget to mention the lack of investment in healthcare, education and social services. On top of this, there is still the continued destruction of the planet’s environment and ecosystems. All of these decisions negatively affect students both here and abroad, but students have power in numbers. We can unite to paralyze a system that is no longer serving us adequately until they do their duty to represent our will.