Sitting here in Burnaby, it’s interesting observing the protests in Toronto on television or through social media.  Were I in Toronto, I would have been on the streets.  It would have been terrifying.  But it would have been liberating.

Yes, the protests and actions smashed some windows and burned some police cars.  Yes, the black bloc tactic was employed.  Yes, there were thousands in the streets.  But there’s a reason for this.  The people who are meeting in the downtown core of Toronto as part of the G8 and G20 are our “leaders,” our “politicians,” and they are the people who, according to the popular mythology, we have elected to do the peoples’ work.

But they’re not doing that work.  And the people are rightfully unhappy.  And they want to protest this lack of work.  And they do.  And the police put on their riot gear and pick up their batons and pepper spray and beat back the people in the streets.  Why? They’re “protecting” the people in the meeting from the people in the streets.

The protestors in the streets of Toronto, of Vancouver, of Genoa, of Buenos Aires, of Santiago, of Johannesburg, and of so many other cities and towns and places around the world are demanding a different world.  And they’re demanding a different world, a better world, in the only way that might be left.

Emma Goldman famously said, “if voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”  So many of the people in the streets of Toronto today were there because they voted for a difference.  And no matter who was in power, promising that difference, it has yet to come.

The media argue that the protestors in the streets have resorted to “violence.”  Smashing a window is not violence.  It is destruction of property, certainly, but not violence.  And the property being destroyed when someone smashes a window of a bank or a transnational corporation is but one manifestation of an inherently violent system, capitalism, which requires subjugation and exploited labour and alienation.  The window of a bank is one manifestation of a system with forcibly enclosed public spaces, which removed people from lands and removes the product of peoples’ work from their own control merely because they must work to survive.

The smashing of a window is an act of freedom, as it smashes the manifestation of the violent system and strikes at its heart.

And our “leaders,” the politicians, know the violence of the system and its inherent contradictions.  The capitalistic desire to profit more created the commercial ‘products’ and predatory lending and so forth that caused the economic crises that that hurt so many.  The crises that the G8/G20 meetings are struggling to address, in order to restabilize capitalism.

And the people don’t want this.  They want their education system to be free and of high quality.  They want public health care.  They want equality and freedom.  This is the peoples’ work, and it is what so many of us vote for, when we are permitted to vote.

But our “leaders” aren’t doing this work.  And so the people are in the streets, protesting.

And the fences go up, and the police march in, and the boots come down, to protect the people who have been elected to do the peoples’ work from the people who elected them.  Who want them to do their work.

Friends, we have a choice.  We can continue to hope that the people that we vote for will actually do the work that we want them to do.  Or we can do it ourselves.

I’ll see you in the streets.

Many people have asked me to share the text of my remarks to convocation today. You’ll find them below.

But first – I really, truly, and strongly believe that all of our experiences from our adventures at university have been influenced by the people that we’ve been lucky to go through them with. All of you — from my closest friends to those of us who really just wave ‘hi’ in the hallway — have been a part of my experiences at SFU, and you all have contributed in some way.

When I started writing these remarks, I wanted to think of some way that we could all be a part of the event. In the end, much of what I wrote and said has a connection to many of you – my friends – because I have been influenced by you, because you are all amazing people, and because we’ve managed to somehow spend some part of the past five years together. There are a number of references in the speech that I meant to be associated with specific people.

So many of you are not letting the world ‘just be’. You are not passively ‘thinking of the world.’ You are all, truly amazing.

Thank you for sharing yourselves with me during our adventures so far, and I’m looking forward to the ones to come.

with love and solidarity and all the best wishes,

kevin

—–

Mr. President, Mr. Chancellor, faculty, staff, guests, and friends and family,

Thank you all for coming together, here at this [rarely sunny / often dreary] concrete campus, to celebrate the graduation of this class of Simon Fraser students.

While it is next to impossible to speak for such a diverse body of students, I would like, on their behalf, to offer a very sincere and very heartfelt thank you to the staff of the university who make sure it works, to the faculty who help us learn, and to our friends and family who have supported us in many ways. And, of course, my most heartfelt congratulations to all of us who are graduating today.

Today is a day of celebration. We are graduating with BAs, MAs, or PhDs, in subjects that vary from Anthropology to Women’s Studies. Our graduation marks our successful completion of programs of study in what many term to be an institution of enlightenment – the university. Our experiences here, despite the all too common fog, rain, stairs, and concrete, have brought light into our lives. That the university is an institution of enlightenment is uncontroversial.

But today is also a day of reflection. And on reflection, I want to suggest something that is perhaps a bit controversial. The parchment that each of us is receiving today may not be worth anything at all.

To understand this, we need look no further than the university’s corporate slogan, emblazoned on every business card, letterhead, and program in this space.

What does it say? “Thinking of the world.” This is what we proclaim we do here. It is a slogan that seems worthy of greeting cards. It is not enough.

When we are just thinking of the world, we may say we understand exploitation, but we may not do anything to change the fact that there are more slaves today than at any time in human history.

When we are just thinking of the world, we may say we think of the value of the university as a place where conventional knowledge can be challenged, but we might tolerate actions that chill debate and dissent in the academy, turning it into a place that reinforces the dominant ways that harm so many.

When we are just thinking of the world, we may say we see the value of a public education, but we may not challenge the creeping corporatization that sees publicly funded research as something to be privately sold for private profit, that sees the workers at the university as costs to be managed and minimized, and students as products to be produced as quickly and plentifully as possible.

To twist a philosopher’s words, we have hitherto merely thought of the world. The point, however, is to change it.

Paulo Freire has said that “true reflection leads to action.” We must do the same. We, as SFU graduates, have thought a lot about the world. We must now start to change it.

It seems absurd to stand here and extol the virtues of education and of the university; this supposed institution of enlightenment. The light that is education and the university, as a way to see past the way things are now to see how things ought to beis powerful and empowering. It is passion and compassion. It is so much more. With it, we can transcend thinking of the world and go from here and change it. But a terrifying darkness is encroaching.

A good friend of mine stood in this place and told a different graduating class the story of how his family witnessed the destruction of the Old City Library in Sarajevo, as they were forced to leave. He told his graduating class that his family wept, because as they watched the library burn, they knew that their and other lives were about to slip into a blinding darkness without freedom, beauty, justice, or the prospect of things to come. This is the darkness.

War is with us. For now. Oppression is with us. For now. Exploitation is with us. For now. The creeping corporatization of the university is with us. For now. Surely we have thought so much about the world that this is obvious. The darkness is encroaching. For now.

This does not have to be the case. We have been thinking of the world, now it is time to change it.

It seems both impossible and terrifying to challenge you to change the world. How can we do this? How can we change the world? Live this question, live the change. Ignore the supposed impossibility of changing the world and do it – and then, after we have done it, we can check back to see if it was so impossible.

Some of us are already doing this. Students from SFU are building schools in Ghana and around the world. They are working for non-profit organisations in Canada, working to erase poverty, bring education and equality to disadvantaged populations, to save the environment from destruction. Some of us are researching cures to diseases, on more just ways of organizing society, and some are fighting for public education. Whether it be fundraising or researching or standing up for what they believe in, they are working to change the world.

We have a variety of skills that we have learned in our various classes. We can change the world. Some of us are already actively working at this. The rest of us can start today. To repeat Paul Hawken: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.

We who are graduating today have a particular challenge. We are receiving congratulations, but we also receive a responsibility. We have been given a gift, a gift of light. We must now protect it, we must guard it, we must cherish it, and we must share it.

Without this light, in the darkness, the parchments that we have are worthless.

Therefore, I have a simple message; one that I ask you, that I beg you, that I plead with you, to take to heart. Do not just, simply, passively, only think of the world. Change it too. Guard and share the light. Think of the world. Reflect on it. Change it.

It is our responsibility. We can change the world. Nous sommes prêts. We are ready. Let’s change the world.

Thank you and congratulations.

On August 20, 2009 the Province of British Columbia announced that the provincial dollars to support public libraries would be $13,700,000, which is about 78% of previous years. While this represents a reduction, the libraries of BC are pleased to see that the provincial government recognizes the integral role public libraries play in community development and literacy.¹

While I disagree with the ‘pleased sentiment’ (being happy with a cut in funding to important services isn’t the best approach, in my humble opinion), I think that what’s happening to the public libraries in the province should be making us in advanced education start to brace for impacts.

CBC reported today that the Finance Minister of the province is telling BC voters to get ready for a “very, very difficult budget.”  According to CBC,

“We are desperately trying to maintain the critical services in health care and education and the social services. So it’s definitely been a challenging summer,” the finance minister said Wednesday.

I would not be surprised to hear that provincial funding transfers to universities were to be impacted in much the same way that the libraries have been.  This will be an incredibly difficult budget for universities to cope with, especially since they’re already five months into a fiscal year.

In short, I think we should be bracing for the impact – and getting ready to say no.

If you’re on Twitter (I admit it, I have an account), or on Facebook, or if you’ve watched anything approaching television news in the past few days, you’ll likely have noted that there’s something going down in Iran — especially if you’re on Twitter, where the tag #iranelection has been a trending topic for the past week.

According to the internets, millions of people have been on the streets in Tehran and around Iran recently protesting — at first, they were protesting what they felt was an unfair and rigged election, where the results of an election in which over 40 million people voted were announced two hours after polls closed — and now they are protesting what appears to be, prima facie, extreme violence and repression on the part of a state and a ‘supreme leader‘ who has demanded that all those in the streets return home and accept the results without complaint.

While I will wholeheartedly and emphatically note that I am not an Iran expert, I will comment on the developments as I have observed them, through the media, through online sources, and through discussing the situation with members of the Iranian community at school.  There’s something big happening, and I think that we all need to pay some serious attention.

One thing that particularly strikes me is the power of the people in the streets.  The protests have been described as “amorphous and leaderless,” with some commentators using this as their indicator of an inevitable doom.  Despite these dire predictions, the protests have not waned.  Despite the orders of the Supreme Leader to accept the election results and stop protesting, millions are in the streets.  Despite the blood on the pavement, they are on the street.

Those in Iran, and many thousands and millions around the world, are watching the developments through updates from Twitter, Facebook, and other social media.  While it took some time for the mass media to catch up, they have — and while CNN is continuously waving the fax it received from the Iranian Ministry of Culture prohibiting it from broadcasting from the country — the whole world is watching the protests and the violent repression from the Iranian state.

The people in the streets are chanting as they protest.  At first, it was “where is my vote?” Now it is “No more Pinochets.”  At night it is “Allah-o-akbar” (god is great), shouted from the rooftops.  See a haunting video of this here.  As the Iranians chant and protest, there are plainclothes state militia in the street — the basij — literally hunting them down.  One particularly terrifying video is apparently that of the death of a girl named “Neda” who died in the streets of Tehran after being shot by riot police.  A not-safe-for-work and graphic video is online.

(Parenthetically, in this context, there’s no wonder why anarchists cry “smash the state,” especially the one that’s smashing you.)

a complicated situation

The situation is complicated.  I will admit that when I first heard of the Iranian elections — just over a week ago — my first thought was one of surprise that contested elections were actually allowed in Iran.  While there was a decidedly contested election going on  – many analysts, pre-vote, had thought that the 50% majority would not be reached in the first round, and that a second round of voting (that would have been held yesterday) was likely between current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and main opposition candidate Mir Hossein Moussavi – the election was not particularly free, as the candidates must be approved by one of the religious governing bodies before they are allowed to compete.

As we now know, the election did not head to a run-off vote, because Ahmadinejad apparently won a stunning 2:1 majority, beating the other candidates by millions of votes — in many cases, even in their home towns and provinces, which is unheard of in the ethnically divided Iran.  Even more stunning is the speed with which results were announced — as I noted above, the millions and millions of votes were apparently counted within only a couple of hours.

That’s where the protests started.  The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ‘blessed’ the results after they had been provisionally announced.  Many have commented that Khamenei was a supporter of Ahmadinejad going into the election.  Moussavi, a ‘reformer,’ isn’t exactly a radical reformer — he has been the Prime Minister of Iran, and was involved in the 1979 Islamic revolution — but his campaign apparently included pledges to increase awareness in ‘what’s going on’ in government and a potentially more diplomatic relationship with other states in the world, in comparison to Ahmadinejad, who’s well-known in the western world for claiming that there are ‘no homosexuals’ in Iran and other grandiose statements.

In my mind, I can’t endorse or even comment on the candidates themselves.  It’s politics of another state that I don’t fully understand, and there’s an abundance of caution necessary — I don’t particularly want to support a candidate who may not be any better than the current crew.

I can, however, be opposed to oppression and repression — especially the kind that I’ve seen on the internet and in the media as of late.

the amorphous and leaderless movement

It’s also on the internet and through the media that I’ve seen some of the most promising and interesting examples of the amorphous and leaderless movement.

Much of the non-Iranian western world caught wind of what’s going on in Iran through Twitter, because the media basically ignored developments.  On Twitter, thousands of members quickly began following developments and spreading word of what was happening.  How this happened was quite interesting

The development of the #iranelection hashtag
On Twitter, users can choose a one-word discussion topic ‘title’, preface it with a #, and it becomes a hashtag — a tag that can be embedded or added at the end of an individual post (called a ‘tweet’) that allows for the threading and grouping of discussions.  Most interfaces to Twitter, through the main website or separate applications, allow for navigation by hashtags.  The development of a hashtag is an interesting observation in psychology — many potentialities are explored, with one becoming dominant.  According to an online trend tracker for Twitter, the now-dominant tag #iranelection first appeared at about 16:30 on 12 June 2009 — just over a week ago.  Since then, it’s become the most popular tag on Twitter for some time — generally called a ‘trending topic’.

a leaderless, amorphous — but organised — movement
A large amount of the online discussion around the elections in Iran at first focused on reports of Iranian twitterers providing first-person accounts of what was going on.  These first-hand accounts were ‘re-tweeted’ (repeated) by other interested twitterers, to ensure that the messages were heard.  During the last few days of the election, the discussion centred around the fact that internet access and Facebook was often cut off — these being important organising avenues for the opposition supporters — service drops that were perceived to support Ahmadinejad.

It is interesting to note the effectiveness of the leaderless and amorphous movement when it comes to spreading information and eliciting support and action on the part of many of the twitterers.  It was quickly noted that re-tweeting posts that included Iranian twitterer user names was problematic, as it was rumoured that Iranian state agents were on the website tracking users and finding them in their neighbourhoods and homes.  This message was rapidly re-tweeted, and it is exceedingly rare to now find a message from anyone from Iran being re-tweeted with user names or other identifying information — members of Twitter are actively working on supporting each other and keeping each other safe.  A movement to shade user icons (avatars) green to show support for the Iranians quickly flourished, and now a preponderance of user icons in the #iranelection discussion are green.  A second urgent message quickly spread throughout the discussion: all users were encouraged to change their profile locations to Tehran, and their time zones to the one that matched the Iranian time zone, in an attempt to confuse Iranian government agents.

twitter discourse
The discourse observable on Twitter was somewhat like Jürgen Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action – certain claims of valid information were presented in a public forum, were considered by the participants, and were acted upon.  Rational and logical claims tended to succeed — it made sense that user names should not be repeated, that the phrasing of re-tweeted messages should be altered to prevent simple searches from identifying users, and that changing time zones and locations may help confuse state authorities.  In a way, the discourse worked best because it was not led by a specific leader — all could participate.

As the protests ramped up in intensity, it was also interesting to note the kind of information being passed through the Twitter website.  Many users, not from Iran, began posting links to first-aid guides on the internet, and multi-lingual users aided in translation of such guides into Farsi.  Twitter was also used to quickly and rapidly spread information about the location of protests and rallies in Tehran and the rest of Iran — while internet access, cellphone service, and SMS capabilities were variably available, often being shut down by the state, activists shared information as quickly as they could and in as many different fora as possible — Twitter became one of them.

In the days following the ‘results’ of the election, silent and peaceful protests in Iran were the norm.  Following Supreme Leader Khamenei’s sermon during Friday prayers, where he told Iranians to cease protesting, and implicitly threatened any who continued to rally, the protests turned ugly.  Here, Twitter began spreading useful information: some users began tweeting remedies and solutions for tear gas, while others began advertising foreign embassies where injured protesters could seek refuge.  (Sadly, the Canadian embassy was closed and refusing entry — not a major surprise…)

they even attacked the universities…
To add to the horrors, the Iranian militia attacked the universities of Iran.  They stormed the dormitories, and attacked the students holed up inside, the students who were communicating for their fellow people with the rest of the world, the students who were organising many of the protests.  In Iran, like many other places in the world, it is illegal for military or police to even enter university campuses — hence the horrendous ramifications of police murders in universities.

the leaders will be responsible
While Khamenei threatened Moussavi with holding him responsible for any violence that occurred, as he was a ‘leader’ of the protests, I would argue that the situation has progressed beyond the point where Moussavi is in any true leadership position.  The second that the state militia began firing on civilians who were peacefully protesting, a rubicon was crossed — the movement in Iran (and around the world) is no longer one for Moussavi — it is for the Iranians.

leaderless and amorphous: a strong organising model

The amorphous and leaderless movement is actually a strong point of organising instead of  the prophesied fatal weakness.  Just as the discourse on Twitter has shown the ability for masses of people to collectively share vital information and collectively strategise and organise, so too has other social media and technology — when Iranians are not able to access the internet, they are able to SMS, or they are able to use telephones, or they are able to shout from their rooftops.  The lack of a specific leader provides a significant challenge to the state authorities who cannot arrest a single person and assume that they have cut off the head of the snake — the leaderless and amorphous movement has, using the same metaphor, more heads than a hydra.

The leaderless and amorphous movement has also turned what could have been regarded as a simply parochial dispute over likely rigged elections into something that millions of people around the world are actively taking interest in, and taking action on.  The lack of a leader has allowed the thousands of activists around the world to actively contribute to the online and real-world discussions around the protests.  The amorphous nature has allowed each to contribute.  This is basically a validation of the anarchist model of organising: there are no leaders, and everyone contributes.  The nature of the discourse allows for various statements and validity claims to be evaluated and acted upon.  The nature of the organising model also allows for a quick and efficient ‘weeding’ function: suspected ‘trolls’ or government agents are readily identified (they may have only recently joined Twitter, etc, or they may be maliciously spreading false information — something readily detected) and the movement continues on strong.

Rather than being a movement that is built around a strong leader — which might otherwise quickly decline into a personality cult such as Peronism in Argentina — the movement in Iran (and around the world) is built around a strong idea.  The structure of political life in Iran is most certainly not leaderless nor amorphous; indeed, there is a ‘Supreme Leader’ and a structure so strong that it is ‘taboo’ to challenge it.  The leaderless and amorphous movement for freedom, peace, and democracy allows the protesters to imagine an alternative that would allow them to participate and take control of their own lives — and that is likely an additional reason why it is alluring.  Such an allure is likely also attractive to the rest of us in the world.

Adding state-sanctioned violence into the mix likely doesn’t help: there’s nothing that can lose a regime’s legitimacy more, or quicker, than killing its own citizens, simply because they are in the street voicing their displeasure.  Weber argued that a ‘state’ is something that has a legitimate monopoly on the use of violence; the state of Iran is quickly losing the legitimacy, and with it, the monopoly.

challenging the ‘realist’ model, and de-centering the state writ large

The developments in Iran, aside from illustrating the power of a decentralised organising model, also have begun to highlight problems with the classical ‘realist‘ conception of international politics.  Realism, for those not entirely familiar with the intricacies of international relations theoretical standpoints, is based on the premise that states are the primary political actors.  This theoretical standpoint is so pervasive that it is argued to simply be the ‘reality’ of the way things work, hence the name.  However, realism cannot handle nor deal properly with actors on international levels that are not states — when a terrorist network attacks the United States, the United States, in realist mode, needs to attack a state in return, so they attack Afghanistan.  Wars on things that are not states do not fit into the realist paradigm.

The Iranians in the street do not fit into the realist paradigm.  They are in the Iranian state, but they are not the Iranian state — indeed, they are actively organising and acting against it.  A number of United States Twitter users have remarked on this, noting the sharp difference between the individuals and their leadership — and they note that this division should be remembered for the next time that their state wishes to bomb another.

The current developments in Iran do not fit into the realist paradigm, and this is likely a very good thing.  Here, the state is acting against the people — and the paradigm dictates that a state is the ultimate political actor.  Here, many people around the world feel that it would be unjust to privilege the Iranian state, and those in control of it, over the people in the streets — likely because they could imagine themselves in a similar position.  This challenge to the realist paradigm is much needed, because it takes the state out of the centre of the political sphere, and puts people back into the centre.

hope for the future

The protests in Iran open up a window of hope for the future — both of Iran and of the rest of the world.  Despite the police and military crackdowns, and the horrific and terrifying murders of innocent civilians, who are in the streets protesting the murder of other innocent civilians, there is hope for the future.

For Iran, it is hope that the people who are struggling for a free, peaceful, and democratic future may actually be able to achieve this entirely laudable goal.  The way that the protesters are able to organise themselves and resist the tyrannical and murderous orders of the state in an attempt to see that their votes are counted properly and that they could potentially exercise a bit of control in their lives.  Why should we not support this?

For the rest of the world, the hope is the same.  While it is not the case that we are all facing police bullets every day, the fact that there are some people out there who are should be enough to convince us that resting easy is not sufficient.

As I said above, the most powerful thing to me is the power of people in the streets.  There is an interesting quote from a New York Time columnist that I will reproduce here:

TEHRAN — The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley with arms raised and his small unit at his side. “I swear to God,” he shouted at the protesters facing him, “I have children, I have a wife, I don’t want to beat people. Please go home.”

A man at my side threw a rock at him. The commander, unflinching, continued to plead. There were chants of “Join us! Join us!” The unit retreated toward Revolution Street, where vast crowds eddied back and forth confronted by baton-wielding Basijmilitia and black-clad riot police officers on motorbikes.

A facebook friend posted the following thought on Facebook:

[Bill] is glad that the Iranian protesters are receiving media coverage and public attention. But it’s also hard not to think about the fact that pro-democracy and labour movements all over the world deal with police brutality on a daily basis. We are very selective about what is seen as urgent, relevant and important. We could tweet pictures every week of protesters being shot by cops, somewhere…

My response? Simple.  ”…and we should.”

I’ll leave the end of this sudden-random essay with a repost of a translated Iranian blog, written just a day or two ago.  It illustrates the hope and resolve of the people protesting.

“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…”

What is this event?
“envision education” is a community-led visioning workshop that brings together members of the university community to develop a plan for our university. Community resistance to cutbacks, budget reductions, layoffs, and program elimination is met with two general responses: “what would you rather us do?” and “there is no alternative.” A workshop that brings together the university community will enable us to develop an alternative, and propose ideas that we can work for at our university.
Think of your ideas that would answer these questions: what should our university be? What should education be? How do we get there?
The workshop will be led by organizers with the SFU Community Coalition, and is open to all members of the university community.

When and where?
The workshop will be held on Friday, May 15th from 11:30am to 1:30pm in room MBC 2290 at the SFU Burnaby campus.

Who can participate?
All members of the university community are welcome to participate – a broad range of participation allows us to develop a wide and encompassing idea of what we think our university should be.

How do I sign up?
If you would like to attend and participate in the visioning workshop, please confirm your attendance by contacting Kevin Harding by email at kharding@sfu.ca. Please include your name, email address, and which campus constituency you belong to (APSA, CUPE, SFUFA, TSSU, GSS, SFSS, Poly Party, or other) to help the organizers plan for numbers. Please register by May 14th.

What do I need to bring?
Mostly yourself – we hope to have representation from all the community constituencies so that we can bring together a wide vision of what the university should be. Bring your thoughts on what you think the university and education should be, and how we can get there.

The take-home message?
· “envision education”
· a community-led visioning workshop – creating a new vision for our university
· Friday, May 15th, 11:30am-1:30pm.
· Register by emailing your details to kharding@sfu.ca
· Think about these questions: what should our university be? What should education be? How do we get there?

The most immediate impact to you and me? Tons and tons of signs will soon occupy every conceivable green space in your local neighbourhood, covered in bright colours, and you may well have people going door to door telling you that you should vote a certain way.  Television channels will be overrun with commercials telling you that Gordon Campbell wants to kill your grandmother, or that the NDP are so inept with finances that they couldn’t be trusted to run a popsicle stand.

Electoral politics is lovely.  I’m not actually going to wade, too deep, into the BC NDP/BC Liberal election fight, other than to simply state that I don’t think that re-electing Gordon Campbell and his merry band of neoliberal buccaneers would be the best thing that the electorate could do.  There are a number of reasons for this, of course.  At the same time, I don’t immediately believe that an election of the provincial incarnation of the NDP will lead immediately to sunshine, rainbows, lollipops, and unicorns.  No, it certainly won’t, but the Liberals are certainly not the best choice of a route to such promised lands anyways.

I will, of course, get to the prognostication on the rough-and-tumble of electoral politics in a few paragraphs, but there is actually something important that is being voted on — that is, the proposal to change the electoral system that we use to translate the single ‘x’ that you place on a ballot next to the name of the least offensive candidate to another system entirely.

This is important, and I hope you take the time to educate yourselves on the BC-STV proposal, and then vote in favour of it. Jasmin wrote an excellent note earlier about the BC-STV proposal, and indicated in it the philosophical problems that people who are of a more anarchic bent (myself included, perchance)  have when it comes to voting in the governmental elections (I think Subcommandante Marcos said it best when he explained that voting “simply legitimises a system premied upon exclusion”) but there are several reasons why you should actually take the time to understand what’s going on.

So let’s all learn a little bit.  Right now, we have an electoral system called ‘first past the post’ (FPTP) or ‘single member plurality.’ Currently, you mark an ‘X’ next to the name of the candidate that you’ve decided to vote for, or, in my case, find least offensive.  Then the votes are all counted and the person who receives the most votes, not necessarily a majority, wins the one and only seat up for grabs in your riding.  Theoretically, this could (and often has, in practice) mean that the person designated the ‘winner’ in your riding could actually have received less than a majority of the votes.  In cases like this, I would argue that the system has failed; the majority of people are not represented (politically) by the ‘representative’ elected.

This is why a new electoral system was discussed by a Citizen’s Assembly, and why the proposal to change voting systems to something called the British Columbia Single Transferable Vote (hence BC-STV) was proposed.  In 2005, the proposal won 58% of the vote in the province, and a majority in all but 2 of the 79 ridings, but was not implemented because a 60% threshold was imposed. (there’s a side argument here about a minority of voters ensuring that a minority of voters are actualy represented, but back to the main fare).

BC-STV is different than FPTP in that you don’t just mark a single ‘X’ next to your preferred/least odious candidate.  Instead, there’s a list of candidates, and you get to rank them, as in you write down a 1, 2, 3 next to the candidates in the order that you would prefer.  This allows you to mark a first choice, and a second choice, and so on.  Ridings are also no longer represented by a single member — they’re bigger, and have multiple members.  When the elections are run and votes are counted, there’s a bit of math involved, but your vote can be counted for the person that you voted for but also for your second choice and so on, providing a bit more ‘proportionality’ in the system.

Proportionality is important.  Given that there’s every possibility that an MLA could be elected without a majority of support in a riding, there’s every possibility that a government could be elected without a majority of support in the province, country, etc.  And it happens.  It happened to the NDP in 1996, where they won the most seats with fewer votes, and it’s happening right now federally with a Conservative government that only 36% or something of Canadians voted for. BC-STV aims to change that a bit, bringing in other parties to the legislature.  You may well see that when the referendum is passed, we could have Green Party MLAs and the like in the next round of voting. An additional benefit is that the seats are supposed to roughly correspond to the parties’ votes — ie, if Party A gets 30% of the votes in the election, they ought to get about 30% of the seats.

This has the potential of opening the system up to more parties that could be peoples’ second choices, and may allow a viable ‘alternative’ to the BC Liberals and NDP to form.  And that means that the system could change, ever so slightly, from one premised on exclusion to one that is at least less biased against inclusion.  Which is why we all should vote in favour of it.

Of course, there are also a number of other important things going on in the election.  The election is a chance for us to de-elect Gordon Campbell and his BC Liberal party, who are hell-bent on privatizing every aspect of the social institutions that we cherish and destroying everything else by subjugating them to the “invisible hand” of the market.

In countless surveys, people are asked what social services they appreciate and value.  They generally respond with “health care” and “education.”  One would think that protecting, promoting, and supporting these cherished social institutions would be a good way to get elected or stay elected.  However, Campbell and his thugs have decided that slowly killing these services is the best way to run the province.

As they legislate a requirement for BC Hydro to purchase new power from ‘independent’ (read: private) sources, they privatize the rivers from which power is generated.  As they decrease funding to universities and colleges and schools, they privatize education.  As they actively undermine the Canada Health Act, which Canadians demanded and which creates the semi-socialised helath care system, they privatize health care.

They must be stopped.

If you know me well, you know that when we get drunk and when we start talking politics, I point to education as the root of my political philosophy.  This is because education is transformative – it changes people.  Every serious university student I know jokingly or half-seriously complains about education and learning things they’d rather not know.  At university, we learn about oppression, atrocities, manipulation, hegemonies — all things, honestly, that would make life easier if we didn’t know them.

But at the same time, education makes us ask “how” and “why.”  Instead of simply watching television reports about the Somalian ‘pirates’ and getting angry, we should be asking  how the pirates got there and why they are doing what they are doing.  We should be asking about the fact that Somalia is a failed state, about the history of colonialism that led to that failure; we should be asking about the nuclear waste being dumped off of Somalia’s shores and the fact that the first ‘pirates’ in the country were a self-described ‘voluntary coast guard.’

Education is what enables us to break free of our chains and ask these questions, and education is also what enables us to understand that there is an alternative.  Education teaches us theory, and education teaches us practice.  And praxis — when we put theory in to action — is entirely possible.

So education is important.  But the BC Liberals are in the process of destroying education at the post-secondary level as they decrease funding, as they set higher enrolment targets, and expect universities to do more with less.  Universities are left scrambling, orienting themselves to markets, and losing sight of the public trust that we, as a society, have entrusted them with — the trust that they will teach us to ask how and why.

This needs to be stopped.

The easiest way to stop this is to not mark an ‘x’ next to the BC Liberal candidate in your riding.  Consider them to be the most offensive candidate, and choose elsewhere.  Because of FPTP, you’ll likely need to choose a least offensive candidate — and in most ridings, this is the NDP.  I don’t think that they’re a magical solution — indeed, they’re not exactly an overtly socialist party, or even timidly social democratic most of the time — but they are potentially the least offensive option.

And remember to vote ‘yes’ to the BC-STV proposal, so that we may be able, in the future, to rank our preferred candidates over the least offensive.

———-

Additionally, some links:

• the main BC-STV site
• Try voting in a simulated BC-STV election

Apparently, as part of a budgetary review sparked by a “budgetary crisis,” the university has proposed axing the Women’s Studies program.  According to the university admin, this isn’t being done because of any political views or disagreements with the content of the program, but because it simply isn’t fiscally feasible to provide the program.

Here’s a quote from the administration, courtesy of the Ontarion, the university’s student newspaper:

“It’s not about women’s studies. The university is in a serious financial crisis,” said associate vice-president academic and psychology professor Serge Desmarais. “Given the budgetary issues that are going on, the deans decided to look at what had low enrolment. We must ask whether certain programs are worth sustaining.”

This quote is quite similar to the one used at Simon Fraser University when the administration suspended the Canadian Studies program — closing off its admissions and cutting funding.  Here, the administration pointed to a low enrolment in the program and argued that this was proof that the program was unsustainable.

According to a Guelph local newspaper, faculty and students aren’t just letting the program die quietly.  Faculty and students have sent letters and protested the closure to the media.   Recently, over 100 students, faculty, and staff banded together and marched on the administration building to protest the closure of the program.

One student noted that

“(U of G president Alastair) Summerlee got a raise for an amount over and above what it costs to run the women’s studies program,” Anastasia Zavarella added. “That’s just galling.”

Perhaps one of the more interesting quotes out of Guelph is from a former director of the program:

Helen Hoy, the former co-ordinator of the women’s studies program who now teaches two courses in the program, said it’s chronic underfunding that has kept enrolment numbers low and not lack of popularity.

She said the program has grown since 1995 to include not just feminism but race, sexual orientation, age and social justice issues.

“Yes it’s a time of financial difficulty, but this panicked talk is to encourage us to fold. This is not the time to back away,” she said.

According to Hoy, chronic underfunding is the reason for the low enrolment numbers.  This makes sense to me, in a very real sense; program underunding often prevents programs from being able to offer enough courses to draw students in and allow them to complete their degrees in a timely manner.  If programs and courses aren’t available due to low funding, and thus infrequent offerings, students quite simply won’t take them.

We just saw a similar thing happen to Canadian Studies.  The most interesting quote out of the final public lecture from Canadian Studies was by Mel Watkins, who, according to The Peak:

[...] made a similar argument in a more provocative manner, suggesting “only half facetiously” that the funding should be transferred from Economics and Business departments, since the dominant theories of those disciplines are partially responsible for the recession.

I am currently a member of the Board of Governors, elected by and from the students, and I voted against the budget for a number of reasons, some of which I will detail over the next couple of days. Importantly, you will note that I said that the budget was approved — while I voted against it, this was my action, and the views I express here are my own, shared as they might be by members of the SFU community.

In this update, I will focus on the issues of student aid, as they are affected by the budget. First, the budget document (in an appendix to the main document) raised most tuition fees by 2.0%, which is the most that the Board can raise tuition in any one year.

This quite simply means that education is again more expensive for students.  Assuming a 30-credit year, a domestic undergrad student’s tuition will be $4,719.¹  That breaks down to about $589 a month, assuming an 8 month year, but tuition needs to be paid in full at the beginning of each semester.  Likely kind of difficult.

It’s made even more difficult by the cuts to student aid that were passed in the budget for 2009/10.  I apologize in advance for the amount of numbers coming up, but this story is best expressed in numbers.  And the cuts are in big numbers.  More after the jump.

First, this is the amount (rounded to the thousand) that SFU spent on student aid in 2008/2009:²

This is the budgeted amount of student aid –  that is, this is how much we had actually planned to spend:

You’ll likely note that we spent more than we had planned to.  Here’s how much extra we spent this year on things like scholarships, awards, and bursaries:

We spent nearly a million dollars more on student aid than we had planned on.  As many members of the university administration have noted in Board Finance Committee meetings, it’s not a bad thing, necessarily.  What the overspending means is that the university gave more students bursaries, awards, or scholarships than it had planned on.  The notes to the financial statements explain that the increase is attributable to a higher than expected acceptance rate on bursaries, scholarships, and awards.

So what are we planning for next year?  Well, here’s the budgeted amount of money that the university is planning on student aid in the next year:

You’ll note, likely quite quickly, that this is an increase from this year, both in terms of budget and project actual amount of spending.  The budget document argues that student aid has increased 5% year-to-year, but what’s important to note is how small the increase is from what we actually spent this year:

So this means that we’re only increasing next year’s student aid budget by $33,000 over what we spent this year.  If you’re a grad student, you’ll notice that this amount is only equivalent to about 5 graduate fellowships.  If you’re an undergrad, we’re looking at about 16 average scholarships; less than ten full-year scholarships.

What’s even more frustrating is when you realize that next year’s budget for student aid has been increased by targeted funding for specific new graduate students we hope to recruit.  This money can’t be spent on anyone else; indeed, SFU does not get it unless we recruit the students that the funding is targeted towards.

How much is the targeted funding?

So in the budget for 2009/2010 — which was only increased from what we spent this year by $33,000, there’s a hidden $1.294 million reserved fund.  Since that money is not available to anyone else, I cancel it out (control for it) when I run the numbers.  So what’s the budget for student aid, next year, when we control for the targeted funding?

Which is a considerable decrease from both the actual spending done this year, and the budget spending this year.  How much?  Well, here’s the decrease from budget, which is less than we actually spent:

And here’s the decrease from the aid we actually gave to students:

This means that once we factor out the targeted money — which can only apply to the targeted, new, graduate students — we see that there will be $1.261 million dollars less in student aid in 2009/10 than what we made available to students in 2008/2009.

Add onto this the fact that tuition is going up by 2% in most cases, and the fact that SFU requires that students be approved for BC Student Loans before they’re eligible for bursaries, and I fear that education will be altogether too unaffordable for some students next year.

What are your thoughts?  I’d like to compile comments on student aid for use at Senate and the Board of Governors.

For those interested in where I’m coming from, I’d suggest my campaign website, here, but also do visit the ol’ blog (kevinharding.ca) for random posts, etc.

For background, here’s my official candidate statement:

My name is Kevin Harding, I’m a fourth year student in Political Science, and I’m running for re-election as a student member of Senate and the Board of Governors.  I have been elected to the Senate twice, and am currently completing a first term on the Board.  This year, I’m running for re-election, and for election to the Presidential Search Committee.  I’m heavily involved in the SFU community, serving on a number of committees, working for the SFSS, and actively organizing with the SFU Community Coalition.
Over the past year, I’ve worked hard to make sure that students are heard at the Board of Governors and the Senate.  I sit on the Finance committee of the board, and work hard making sure that the university is accountable to students.  At Senate, I make sure that students are heard all the time—especially when decisions are being made that affect them.  I’ve worked hard to make sure that the provincial government appointees on the Board understand the university, know what’s going on, and keep our education in mind when they make their decisions.
I think it’s incredibly important that students are involved at all levels when decisions are being made that affect them at SFU—and this is why I’m running for re-election.  We need to envision education as it should be—and work together to achieve it.
In the upcoming year, there are a number of significant issues that will need to be addressed at SFU, and students’ views, opinions, and needs are central.  Here are some of the key issues:

• Budget cuts and budget crisis should not harm our education. We all know that university funding isn’t keeping up with the actual costs of running the school and providing a high-quality education.  This is why tuition increases, classes are cut, lecture halls are crowded, and staff are laid off.  The university community needs to come together and work towards a different vision of education—one that benefits everyone, and is high-quality, and public.  Importantly, the Board of Governors must take a public stand, demanding sustainable funding to ensure high-quality, public education.

• All students need their voices heard. Grad students are incredibly affected by the budget cuts, and the university must take them into account.  We can’t expect higher grad enrolments with declining financial support, fewer faculty able to supervise, and cuts in TA/TM positions.  We need to work towards having an increased grad role on Senate and the Board so that their views are heard.  Students can’t be students if they can’t afford it. And since grads often play a key role in teaching, undergrads need to remember that grad working conditions are undergrad learning conditions.

• Course availability and registration issues must be addressed. Many undergrads know all too well the pain of not being able to get required courses because they’re full or not offered.  The university needs to offer required courses more often, and more of them.  A four-year degree should actually take four years—not five or six because you couldn’t get your required courses!

I’ve worked hard for two years representing you, your ideas, your opinions, and your issues at the Senate and Board of Governors.  I’m running for re-election because I think that we need to envision education as it should be and work towards achieving it. With effective student representation, anything is possible.
If you have questions, comments, or anything to say, you can contact me at kharding@sfu.ca.  I have a website at http://www.sfu.ca/~kharding/ where more information is available.  I’m also on Facebook.  Thanks for your support!