The Art of Protesting

Welcome all. Let’s get to it.

Today, it is perhaps the snowiest, most awful Wednesday so far this year. From what I gather, it’s like that many other places today too, or at least is soon to enter into the snowpocalypse. So, why not hold a massive student protest on such a day?!

After the O’Neill report came out, which I admittedly had not read until the morning of the protest, i.e. 7 hours ago, several students (or several dozen students) got up in arms about a tuition hike that would soon be sweeping Nova Scotia. Rates were expected to go up 22%, which certainly would exceed an additional $1300, coming out of my pocket for at least the next 3 years. A protest was organized. Fliers were handed out. Pickets were printed. There would be marching to the Legislature. The protest was on. What was overlooked was whether or not tuition actually would be increasing the full 22%. The government, while often to the contrary, is occasionally not dumb about some things. The premier realized that 22% was a ridiculous number. This number was changed to 3%. I don’t know about you, but 3% (roughly $178) is much more feasible to me. The protesters were informed of this. At this point, I would have given up, but these protesters did not. They marched anyway. For less than $200.

The point of this delightful anecdote is that sometimes you have to pick your battles. I am not frightened by the idea of a protest, but it has to be something I’m pretty damn passionate about. Unfortunately, this was not one of those cases, and I did not attend this particular protest. I don’t disparage the people involved in this protest, except that they are probably not going to be taken seriously by the government for bickering over what are, literally, pennies in the pot to a university the size of Dalhousie.

I see it similarly as a child fighting with their parent over supper. Janie won’t eat her vegetables. Rather than forcing her to eat a big plate of Brussels sprouts, why not try to get her to eat one? The government is trying to only give us just one Brussels sprout, which no one likes anyway, rather than the whole plateful. It was silly to expect that tuition will stay the same forever. I think we should take our one sprout, and live with it, rather than argue over this.

I’d also like to mention, before I go, that if tuition does go up, Dalhousie will be pledging more in scholarships and bursaries, which can’t be a bad thing.

But I digress.