Do you know anything?

Are you paying attention to serious student issues, or are you just here for a degree?

Did you know that the school is undergoing an Academic Program Review? Did you know that the university is being audited for its commercialization of research? Do you know how much the administration gets paid? Are you aware of the budget cuts that the faculties are taking?

Heck, do you even know how much your tuition costs?

You may be up to date with respect to the different and innovative ways this school is screwing us over, but chances are that you aren’t. You live under rock, hoping to get into med school, or studying business or something. It seems to me that no one goes to university to get an education anymore, but rather people come here for the degree, the marks, or because of parental pressure.

University used to be an open forum for the sacred transmission of knowledge from scholars to eager students, a platform for community and global activism, an opportunity to grow as an individual.

But as with everything in the world, graduates are mass-produced and knowledge now has a hefty price tag. What’s more is that the equation remains unbalanced. Tuition rates are rising, the university gets funding increases, yet the level of education has not improved. If anything, it is sinking to a level that should be unacceptable. And that’s the problem. Very few people care, or even know. We’ve lost the ability to be critical and vocal. We’ve succumbed to the powers that be, willingly being screwed by a system that serves the elite at the cost of 99 per cent of us.

I should be honest with you. I come from a privileged background. My tuition is paid for and I drive one of the nicer cars in the M lot. People regularly draw penises on my car, but they do not realize that I actually appreciate what I have and I respect those who have to work three nearly full-time jobs to sustain their lives and education forever bound by the system’s chains of financial debt.

In addition, I’m aware that some people in the world have to walk miles in scorching heat in order to realize a very basic and crude education that will never grant them a higher education or a job. In a way, I envy those people. They are living a real life, and what little they have makes their day, while the rest of us live fake lives, where we only dress to impress and are never satisfied with what we have.

My point here is that if you don’t have to work to pay for school and such, then you have more time than others to care about the issues that affect all of us. Whether you drive a BMW or a Civic, you should read into the issues that affect our university and the global community.

We should talk about ideas, innovations, real issues that affect real people and not about ourselves in an egotistic fashion. It’s sad that people would rather talk about some stupid party they had last weekend, or gossip about others rather than discuss modern day slavery or how much we consume and waste as a society.

Every student should be an open-minded activist, whether you are in pre-med or business. We must kill our selfish way of thinking and push for a world that is just for all.

Mhmoud Essalah
Contributor

Photo by Arthur Ward