I went to Victoria yesterday, along with other members of the SFU Community Coalition, to deliver the petition that we have been collecting to the Minister of Advanced Education, Murray Coell. We didn’t have much luck, as he’s apparently a very busy minister and, as we were told, always in meetings. We were able to deliver a copy of the petition to the minister’s constituency office in Sidney, and a copy to the Ministry office in the Legislature building in Victoria. We didn’t actually get to meet with Coell, but we’re arranging a meeting for the near future.
However, the trek to Victoria ended up being very productive, in my opinion. Those of us who managed to fit into the car and travel to the capital had quite an interesting conversation—and it all revolved around the goals of the SFU Community Coalition and what it is that we’re exactly trying to do.
Importantly, we talked about what a community coalition such as the one at SFU should be doing. Should we be focusing our efforts, and thus the efforts of everyone in the community, on resisting cutbacks? Resisting budget reductions? Resisting financial crises? Obviously, this is a huge part of what we’re doing. We have to. We must resist.
But it isn’t all that we have to do, and it’s certainly not all that we should be doing. Allow me to finish my sentence from just above: resisting cutbacks and budget reductions is something that we have to do beause high quality, public education depends on it. The SFU Community Coalition is not—and cannot—be simply solely about resisting budget cutbacks made to universities. It’s a large part of what we do, but it’s not everything.
The coalition and its actions and activities and organising must also be about something else, something more postitive. During our trek to and from Victoria, we talked a lot about various organising models and options that the coalition can consider, and the four of us that went seemed to reach some kind of a conclusion: the coalition cannot only organise “negative” actions, actions that resist other actions; but it should also organise “positive” actions, actions that promote certain actions, actions that propose an alternative vision, actions that show a path from where we are to where we would like to be.
Quite a bit of thinking, arguing, and discussing went into this. A lot of academic and quasi-academic sources were quoted. But it makes sense. With a negative-based campaign, where we are saying “stop the cuts” or “stop underfunding,” we’re not answering a fundamental question: what would we rather? When we rally, when we organise on campus, we’re using a lot of arguments and rhetoric that are positioned at only opposing things.
Quite fairly, this leaves people with a question: “what should we do?” This came up at the forum on public education that the coalition held, and that I spoke at. People in the audience wanted to get involved, to do something—but they wanted to know what they should do. At the same time, people were wondering what alternative we were proposing. This is key: when an organisation such as the coalition is opposing actions, an instant (and entirely understandable) reaction is to wonder what might be done instead. Without being able to articulate an alternative vision, we may lose support, we may lose energy, we may appear to be one-sided and incomplex in our goals, arguments, and views.
But we’re not incomplex or one-sided. We in the coalition are fighting for high quality, public education. We’re opposing government policy, actions, and decisions that work to destroy that vision of education. Mikhail Bakunin said that “the passion for destruction is a creative passion.” David McNally writes that “another world is possible.” What we are trying to do is both. The SFU Community Coalition is trying to destroy the actions of government that leave post-secondary education underfunded and wanting for money to be able to continue to exist. The coalition must also be creative as it aims to resist these actions; as we resist, we must be able to show, as McNally says, that another world is possible.
This is then the question. What is our alternative vision? One of us who made the trek to Victoria brought up a quote from his partner’s thesis: when you don’t know of an alternative, you’re resigned to the current situation. I’m likely considerably paraphrasing the quote, but it’s true. Not having an alternative vision that we can clearly articulate leaves us with a mountain to climb—successfully opposing government policies—followed by a terrifying gulf—now that we’ve opposed the policies, what do we do? It’s incredibly easy for us to offer up simply a resistance to things, but it’s counter-productive: once we’ve opposed something, what would we say should go in its place? This argument is perhaps the easiest argument that those in power have to use against us: what alternative would we propose? A lack of an alternative also leaves our supporters wanting, needing more.
So what is our alternative vision? Can we imagine a different approach to post-secondary education? A different approach to funding education at Simon Fraser University?
I can. And I will elucidate my opinions further in a day or two. But I’m open to comments. If you care about the education system in this province, tell me why you care, and what makes you care. Tell me your alternate visions; your visions that contest the system that is becoming essentially market-oriented, the system that is becoming a sop to corporate interests instead of being the independent avenue of investigation that it ought to be.
And tell me how we can get to your alternative vision. We could spend all day (and I have, in other places) talking about where our education system is, and where it appears to be going. But as another famous philosopher said, the point isn’t to simply understand the world, “the point is to change it.”