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Leith Dunick, tbnewswatch.com
Students protest peacefully Wednesday at Lakehead University, speaking out against rising tuition costs.
Maggie Ryan is $70,000 in debt and still working toward her bachelor of arts degree.
Michael Snoddon owes $38,000 and counting.
David Briand has to pay back $30,000 and he’s only in his third year of a civil engineering degree program.
Crippling debt-loads are the reason the three Lakehead students joined forces with a 100-strong group of protestors to demand action from the federal to help stop skyrocketing tuition fees from overburdening students any further when they graduate.
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Ryan said she’s had enough.
“We as students need to be heard,” she said. “We need to tell the government how much we owe and ask why we aren’t getting the funding or the help we deserve.”
Ryan said trying to pay back her debt post-degree is going to be disastrous.
“I still have absolutely no idea how I’m paying it off,” she said. “I work full time flipping burgers and to me that’s where it seems like I’m going to be spending the rest of my life trying to afford to pay back what I owe to the governments,” she said.
Briand is in a similar boat, although he owes less than half what Ryan does.
It was important to come out and support the national day of protest, which has crowded streets from one side of Canada to the other. Students simply can’t afford to keep getting hit in the wallet as governments increase tuition fees year after year.
“It’s terrible. It’s going to take me a hell of a long time to get out of this. It’s not something I’m looking forward to,” Briand said. “It’s a problem.
Egged on by megaphone-toting fellow protestors, students filled the school’s Agora with a myriad of rally chants, ranging from “Education is a right, we will not give up the fight” to “We don’t want no mac ‘n cheese. Yo! Dalton, drop the fees.”
Snoddon, the president of the Lakehead University Student Union, said the coast-to-coast action in Ontario is specifically aimed at getting the province to extend its much ballyhooed tuition grants extended to all students.
Because he’s 24, Snoddon doesn’t qualify, under criteria set forth by the province.
“And federally we’re asking the federal government to do something about the $15 billion in student debt that we owe,” he said. “We see in countries from other economies that are doing very well from investing in post-secondary education.
“There’s strong correlation from this, so we’re calling on both governments, provincially and federally, to invest in post-secondary education.”
Students were being encouraged to send faxes to Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada Diane Finley to encourage action before January, when student debt levels are projected to hit the legislative ceiling.