Student leaders are voicing concerns about what will happen to the student union’s services and its supports for marginalized students under the new post-secondary fee structure next fall.
Last week the province announced post-secondary students in Ontario will be able to choose which student fees they want to pay starting in September 2019.
Reforms to the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) were also unveiled, including tightened eligibility for assistance and the elimination of the interest-free grace period for recent graduates. At the same time, the Conservative government announced a 10 per cent cut to tuition fees.
“The whole existence of the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) is in question,” said RSU president Ram Ganesh. “We don’t know if we will be the same organization when we come through this.”
For the 2018-19 academic year, the RSU received about $2.4 million in student fees – nearly 97 per cent of their total revenue. About 75 part-time staff, 11 full-time unionized staff and seven full-time management staff run their operations.
Ancillary fees currently go towards student services, athletic centres, the Student Campus Centre, Oakham House, the Good Food Centre, the Sexual Assault Survivor Support Line (SASSL), a student refugee program and the RSU.
It is still unclear which exact fees will become optional at Ryerson.
Important equity services at the RSU – the Centre for Women and Trans People, Racialised Students’ Collective, RyeACCESS, RyePRIDE, the Trans Collective, the Good Food Centre and SASSL – could face cuts that affect student life and community, said Josh Lamers, co-founder of the Black Liberation Collective (BLC) at Ryerson.
“This is the moment where people are being asked what kind of society we want. Do they want to be living in a society where the most marginalized students have supports?” Lamers said. “Are people willing to invest in community and invest in each other?”
While BLC seeks funds from the university, not the RSU, for funds to run events like Black Frosh, Lamers said he’s concerned both Ryerson and the RSU will have tighter budgets for student groups in the fall.
Ryerson president Mohamed Lachemi said the university’s operating budget will decrease by about five per cent next fall as a result of the province’s directive to cut tuition fees.
Merrilee Fullerton, minister of training, colleges and universities, said in a statement that student ancillary fees in Ontario can cost as much as $2,000 per year and, too often, require students to fund services they don’t use and organizations they don’t support.
Not only will supports for Black, Indigenous, queer and disabled communities on campus be affected, Lamers said, but these students will also face additional barriers when it comes to getting involved in community groups on campus since students, many of whom are already overworked, will have to work more hours or live further away from campus to afford to pay tuition under OSAP reforms.
In a statement, Stephanie Rea, director of communications at the Office of the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, said the government is creating a fee structure that categorizes all ancillary fees.
Fees that support essential services on campus, including health and safety initiatives, will remain mandatory, Rea said. The province is defining “essential services” as athletics and recreation, safe walk programs, financial aid programs, health and counselling, academic supports and student buildings.
That leaves fees that fund campus clubs, course unions, CopyRITE, the RU-Pass, the RSU’s legal and academic advocacy services, campus radio station CJRU 1280 and The Eyeopener, among other things at Ryerson, in question.
“It is up to the institutions to determine what constitutes essential services,” Rea added.
Allowing students to withdraw from such things, which “supplement student life,” will hurt the overall student experience, said Nour Alideeb, chairperson of the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS).
“If students start opting out everywhere, then the total pool of funding for different student initiatives is going to shrink,” said Aidan Messom, co-president of Ryerson Model United Nations (RyeMUN).
Messom said RyeMUN uses all funds made available to students groups by the RSU in order to subsidize costs for students to participate in conferences. “We try to subsidize the costs to make it accessible for students so that they can have these experiences without financial barriers or with minimal financial barriers,” he said.
Karolina Surowiec, the RSU’s vice-president equity, said she’s scared to see what’s going to happen to student supports next fall.
If students opt out of RSU fees, the student union will have to cut back on running community events, public education campaigns and providing free tampons, menstruation products, condoms and other safer sex products, she said.
“Like the RU-Pass had a campaign referendum, we’ll just have to do a similar thing for the RSU and different societies,” said Surowiec. “We might have to hold a campaign every single year for the RSU.”
She said the RSU is meeting with societies across campus this week to discuss next steps.
One day after the province announced reforms to OSAP, hundreds of students rallied to protest the changes, including the Student Choice Initiative at Queen’s Park. The rally was organized by CFS Ontario.
The RSU and CFS need to stop being afraid of being oppositional and take action, Lamers said.
“A letter, a petition, a rally, all these things are expected now by the Ford government,” he said. “People need to really think more creatively [in community organizing].”