NOV.2 -Day of Action against the Price Tag on Education at UBC

We acknowledge that this event, our organizing, words and beings occurs on the occupied, traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples – specifically the sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) nations.
We also acknowledge that acts of systemic colonization against indigenous folks are currently taking place in an ongoing manner within institutions, power structures and language use. We must partake in recognizing our positions and complicity in settler colonialism on these stolen ancestral lands.

November 2nd is the Cross-Canada Student Day of Action and the UBC Social Justice Centre, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) & the Young Communist League (YCL-Van) join individuals and groups around the country to organize against the price tag placed on education. Students who are being disproportionally pushed out of institutions of education are Indigenous, racialized, queer, trans* & differently abled folks who are financially struggling – our education system must not further marginalize these groups by blocking their entryway into universities simply because they are unable to fill certain pockets with paper bills.

This violence must be stopped and we must show our discontent with these systems of exclusion.

Many Indigenous folks are waiting to be granted scholarships & bursaries just be to considered into this school, which was non-consensually built and profits on their ancestral lands. Many immigrants and refugees do not have the monetary ability to have access to education systems. These are acts of horrific violence and are only some reasons of why free education is needed.

Public education is under attack across Canada. The government in Newfoundland and Labrador has ended the freeze on tuition fees and reintroduced student loans instead of grants, while making cuts to Memorial University in its recent budget. In Nova Scotia, increases in government funding to Post-Secondary Education are capped at 1% (well below inflation), and universities are now allowed to increase tuition fees by more than 3% a year, with the excuse of making “market adjustments.” In Ontario, the Liberal government is committed to a Funding Formula Review, that will be disastrous unless students mobilize in a province that already has the highest tuition fees in the country. In Quebec, tuition fees are increasing with inflation while the Liberal government there cuts funding to university and CÉGEP education. In BC, where tuition fees were doubled in four years after they were deregulated a decade ago, the cuts have continued with per student funding remaining far below 2001 levels.

The list of attacks on public education continues in every province, with most provinces facing yearly increasing tuition fees. All governments, alongside their friends in the senior administration of colleges and universities, are pushing for academic and learning environments to be increasingly tied to the interests of big business.
The Trudeau Liberals have also continued colonialism in education by underfunding the Post-Secondary Student Support Program, forcing Indigenous students to not receive their treaty right to free education.

A Federal Post-Secondary Act, would enforce standards for public education to be set in all provinces. It would make private education illegal, meaning educational institutions could not accept money from private tuition fees or private donations. This act, must also respect the rights for Indigenous nations, Quebec, and Acadia, to have self-determination over their own management of institutions and curriculum of education, while providing adequate public funding.

We have seen pockets of important mobilizations across Canada. Recently, students showed solidarity with teaching assistants and sessionals on strike for a living wage at UofT and York, the I Am a Student Movement at UBC built momentum against increases to residence fees and international student fees, the Quebec student movement alongside CÉGEP teachers has been combatting budget cuts, and in Newfoundland and Labrador, a mass movement is growing against austerity, with students playing a key role.”

We are not only notifying you of this event, but also urging you in join us in expressing our solidarity, emotions, voices and hands to bring to light this pressing issue. We are students, not ATMS.

This rally will be happening on November 2nd from 12–1 PM, starting at the Flagpole by the Rose Garden and finishing off by the Nest to listen to some leaders, organizers and passionate social justice warriors expressing their views on conditional educational systems.

With solidarity, love and resilience, the UBC Social Justice Centre

More info on Day of Action nationwide: http://www.cfs-fcee.ca/the_issues

Huffington Post on the urgency of free tuition: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/bilan-arte/the-case-for-free-tuition_b_12516930.html?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004