Hundreds of students gathered in Toronto Saturday to protest OSAP changes. Another protest will take place Monday. Photo by Scott Rook, Loyalist College
By Becky McMullen [1]
BELLEVILLE – Students say they’re angry about OSAP. Who’s listening?
Across Ontario this coming Monday, students are planning to protest changes made to the Ontario Student Assistance Program [2] by the provincial government [3].
Until the changes were made, students who used OSAP loans to pay for their schooling had six months after graduation before they had to start repayment. This six-month grace period was intended to give graduates time to find a steady job before committing to monthly payments. However, the government announced [4] on Jan. 17 that the grace period has been eliminated and payments will begin immediately after graduation.
Other changes include focusing more on low-income families, which means students in higher-income families will no longer be able to receive OSAP funding, and reducing the amount of grant money, which doesn’t need to be repaid, that students can get. At least half of the money a student receives has to be loans.
“The cuts to OSAP make me so mad,” says David Hunter, a second-year surveying student ay Loyalist College. “They make me feel like my education was decided as a low priority to the government.”
Jessica Summers, a second-year fitness and health promotion student, said that because of her family’s income she may not be able to receive OSAP to continue to university, which she had planned to do.
“I was planning on taking a year off (after graduation) and then going to university after, but that might not happen now. I don’t have a spare $30,000 in my pocket,” she said.
Loyalist student-government president Scott Rook attended a march in Toronto last Saturday in protest of the changes. The march went from Yonge and Dundas streets to Queen’s Park.
“It was extremely exciting to see such a unity of support towards such an important cause,” Rook told QNet News.
Loyalist students often go off-campus for protests, Rook said, because places like Kingston and Toronto have more than one school that can come together for the event.
“I’d love to see an independent demonstration here, but I think the message gets across a lot louder if many schools come together,” he said.
The next protest, taking place on Monday, will be at campuses all over Ontario, but not Loyalist. The student government has booked a bus for students to get to the Toronto demonstration.