During a Feb. 5 press conference at a Toronto high school, Ontario Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities Chris Bentley was shouted down by members of the student unions of Ryerson University, the University of Toronto and York University, who impersonated student reporters from their respective campus newspapers in order to attend the conference and protest rising tuition fees.
The Globe and Mail reported that when the disruption occurred, Bentley, who was making an announcement about a new OSAP website, “retreated in haste from the library to the locked doors of the principal’s office, with the protesters in close pursuit” before cancelling the conference.
Although their passion for low tuition rates is admirable, the actions of the student government leaders are inexcusable. The protesting student politicians were nonchalant about their actions when interviewed by The Globe, failing to see anything wrong with what they did. But kudos to Paul Knox, chair of Ryerson’s journalism program, who told The Globe: “In other contexts, the consequences can be quite severe because it casts the whole business of news reporting into disrepute.”
They showed a complete lack of respect for journalism and a disregard for the potential damage the incident may cause to the long-term relationships between campus newspapers, local governments and student unions.
Not only that, considering the size and political clout of the three Toronto universities, chances are the student union presidents could have arranged a face-to-face meeting with Bentley to rationally discuss
their concerns, especially if they showed they were unified on certain issues. The students should have considered the various means to affect change that are accessible to them before resorting to what
amounted to a childish temper tantrum. But it appears that some would still rather throw rocks from the sidelines than work constructively to create meaningful change.
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