While walking to class on Burnaby campus, it’s hard to miss the vibrant chalk drawings adorning the pillars of Freedom Square, remnants of SFU’s extravagant birthday bash earlier this semester. “Flower power,” reads one particularly colourful entry. “Happy birthday, SFU!” read a few others.
Apart from these and a few other decorations, you would hardly know we celebrated a milestone here at all — status quo is everything at this school, and things have quickly returned to normal after the hustle and bustle of a celebratory September.
Now that the dust has settled on our 50th anniversary celebration, we can look at this university’s first half-century with a bit of much-needed hindsight. And I’ll be honest: it doesn’t look good.
For a campus that was once heralded as Berkeley North, our radical history has become little more than a sales pitch. The Convocation Mall, which was specifically designed to facilitate student protests and gatherings, sees more action these days during clubs days and organisational fundraisers. A student body that was once united in opposing governmental corruption, fighting for civil rights, and advocating for better treatment of students and staff has become apathetic and disconnected.
Today’s SFU would be unrecognisable to the radical trailblazers who gave the school its reputation, and I can’t help but think that many of the charter students invited to SFU’s Celebrate and Savour garden party were disappointed in its frivolous display of affluence.
This semester alone has shown just how separated SFU students are from the issues that affect them. The TSSU strike, a product of poisonous university policies that consistently devalue the people working to educate us, resulted in an avalanche of misplaced anger over TAs and sessionals withholding student grades. Skyrocketing international student fees and tuition hikes barely managed to elicit a yawn from all but the most keenly involved students. And the Build SFU project, one of the only issues capable of inspiring students to action, only attracted about 300 voters to the SFSS AGM this year — about one per cent of the student body.
These are issues that students would have fought tooth and nail 50 years ago. Today, most students are barely aware that these problems exist.
But it’s not just the students at fault here. Having celebrated a milestone that would have been unimaginable to the architects and planners building the “instant university” in 1965, SFU’s administration has consistently proven that they’re uninterested in fixing or even addressing the problems that plague our institution.
Our course registration system is broken. Student satisfaction placed 12th out of 15 comprehensive schools in the Maclean’s rankings this year, despite our first-place academic finish. The Kinder Morgan pipeline — which, contrary to popular belief, didn’t just disappear — still threatens the environment and safety of Burnaby Mountain, and our president is unwilling to take a stance towards it. Residents of the Louis Riel House still struggle to find permanent housing after mould concerns prompted the residence’s closure. Our school for contemporary arts is funded by a gold mining company infamous for its disregard for public health and the environment, and the campus itself has actively contributed to the ongoing gentrification of the Downtown Eastside.
And the list goes on.
Ultimately, the Simon Fraser University that you attend today is a far cry from the dreams of our radical progenitors. Our school was envisioned as an alternative to the corporatism and bureaucracy of larger, more historical institutions like UBC, yet we’ve spent the past half century inching closer and closer to that model in hopes of competing for students and funding. What was once the choice for students hoping to receive a different sort of education has become yet another cookie-cutter neoliberal assembly line, churning out devalued degrees to indifferent students and calling it “engagement.”
So why didn’t we hear more of these objections in September, when SFU was emblazoned in red and grey and celebrated as the best thing since sliced bread? I admit that even I joined in on the fun, partaking of sponsored hors d’oeuvres and Instagramming flashy light shows. It’s easy to get caught up in the spirit of celebration and difficult to cast a critical eye — but that work is valuable, especially when so few seem willing to do it.
Ultimately, SFU is a business, its students are its customers, and they will take any opportunity that they can to sell the school to you and to others.
Prickly topics like labour relations and divestment don’t make for effective advertising campaigns, and it’s easier to point towards some nebulous idea of radicalism than to actually live up to that legacy. Once we’re ready to admit that SFU is no longer the radical campus it once was, we can begin tackling the problems that we all face as students and as part of the system.
This isn’t a call to arms. I’m not asking you to sign a petition or volunteer for the SFPIRG or picket Kinder Morgan. What I am asking is for you to pay attention to what happens on your campus and on your dime. Even if you’re only here to get a degree, these issues affect you: namely, in how much you pay for your education, and the quality of the education you receive.
Left unchecked, the administration will continue to bleed you dry. They will keep paying their TAs and sessionals a wage well under the poverty line while refusing to hire new faculty, they will allow big corporations to thread oil pipes through the mountain on which your campus sits, they will deny you access to resources and refuse to fund the services upon which you rely, and most of all, they will revel in the fact that only one out of every thousand students is willing to stand up to them.
If anything, the 50th anniversary of our campus is not an opportunity to celebrate the university. It’s an opportunity to celebrate the students, and to empower us to fight for what we deserve.
This article was originally published in The Peak.
Photo by Alfred Zhang