By Topher Seguin
The national student day of action started slowly at Loyalist College on Wednesday with no more than five people sitting in throughout the day.
Organized by the Canadian Federation of Students, the day was held on campuses across Canada to raise awareness of high tuition fees and to protest student debt.
According to the Federation’s website, as a result of cuts to federal funding for post-secondary education over the last 25 years, provincial governments and individual post-secondary educational institutions have replaced lost funds by increasing fees. The share of university operating budgets funded by tuition fees more than doubled between 1985 and 2005, rising from 14 per cent to 30 per cent. Unprecedented levels of student debt have accompanied the rise in tuition fees,
“We want to prove that a free school is completely possible, and not only possible but the best way to go about education,” said Tyson Leonard, first year journalism online print and broadcasting student at Loyalist, who participated in the protest.
In Toronto, thousands of students from multiple campuses converged at the University of Toronto, marched through downtown and rallied at Queen’s Park. Loyalist currently doesn’t have a large active student resistance against tuition increase.
Michael Oosting, a student at Athabasca University, was one of the few at the Loyalist event. “I live in Belleville and am a Belleville resident, so I want to get involved and help students here,” he said.