In response to “Stop Right Now, Thank You Very Much“
Dear Anonymous,
As both an active member of the Tuition Action Committee, and your elected VP StAG of SLS for next year, I’d like to take some time to respond to what you have written.
To speak directly to the action in January, you mentioned that you understand that our aim was to have the administration take notice. For what it is worth, this was not actually the prime aim of the action – not by a long shot. As many of us saw it, the goal was to seek a better understanding of how students felt about the issue. We wanted to collect qualitative data from outside our own group, so that we could use it to help shape our dialogue and advocacy with the administration. How to use the information was an open question to be answered after the data was in. If you would like to hear more about what we got, and what we plan to do with it, I urge you to get in touch.
You also mention that many of us have ‘chosen to focus… on enforcing a culture of unproductive criticism of the administration’ instead of working ‘with elected student representatives and the faculty’. There are definitely misconceptions here about our group’s commitment to productive dialogue. Many of us sat on SLS this year, and worked directly with the administration on financial aid reform. I ran for VP StAG (and was elected), and look forward to building on my own relationships with members of the administration next year. Again, if you are interested in learning more about our tactics or approach to dialogue, please get in touch – I’d be delighted to talk about it.
Lastly, you mention the subjectivity of value, and your decision about the value of a degree from UTLaw. For what it is worth I agree with you wholeheartedly on the value of a degree from University of Toronto, and from the Faculty of Law in particular. Personally, I would not be here if I wasn’t willing to pay the necessary tuition for three years to get through the program (or, rather, to take on the necessary debt levels). That said, what I would like to point out is that to advocate for lower tuition is not necessarily to make a claim that the degree is not worth $30,000.
The University of Toronto has an international reputation as one of the best (if not the best) public universities in the world. That puts this school in a very unique spot. At my undergraduate convocation from this school our speaker pointed out that we now had a degree, and an education, that ranked among the ivy league schools in the states, and that we had paid a fraction of the cost of one. He pointed out to us that this was because we lived in a society that had said through its policies that there was a societal value to higher education. He then told us that for this reason we should see ourselves as having a duty to live up to the investment society had made in us – through taxes, sure, but also through engaged citizenship, etc.
Personally, when I advocate to address the growing gap between tuition and financial aid, it is because I think the Faculty of Law falls within the ambit of this philosophy. I know this degree is incredibly valuable, and this is why I feel that we need to ensure two key things. Firstly, that our class makeup is based on merit and skill-set, and not financial security. And secondly, that the alumni of this school have the ability to embark on whatever legal career they (being the brilliant people they are) best think suits them, and the role they want to play in Canadian society.
Ensuring those things, while being the school we want to be, without multi-billion dollar endowments is a big challenge. The administration knows that, and they grapple with the problem admirably. As someone who is very invested in the issue, I’m committed to ensuring we take that challenge seriously. So, no, I will not stop right now. Please feel free to ignore me (/us), or to engage in the discussion more actively. But we’re here to stay.
