Refine and refocus

Students need to reevaluate their strategy for saving this university

You might have noticed recently that we here at the Carillon have been awfully hard on the administration of this university. In light of the APR, and with talks of merging entire faculties to free up further efficiencies, it’s really hard not to blame us. Though, after some evaluative soul-searching, we feel that maybe the wrong entities have received almost all of the blame.

Quite frankly, for as much shit as we’ve been piling on Vianne Timmons and company, we should have been piling even more shit on the provincial government.

Before you dismiss this editorial as more Wall-bashing nonsense, I ask you to consider the following: in what province does a post-secondary institution have to get on all fours and beg for a 4 per cent funding increase, only to be told to create a disaster contingency plan in which the university is given a 2 per cent increase to funding, or no increase at all.

It is this same government that killed a multi-million dollar earning film tax credit to stick it to the provincial NDP, but then turn around and freely lend out $80 million to the construction of a shiny new sandbox for our “dearly beloved” Saskatchewan Roughriders.

A stadium, I might add, that saw record numbers of people protesting its very existence. Although a referendum on the questions could not be held, the thousands of people willing to break out of apathy to oppose a motion should not be taken lightly. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if any government has a proven track record of mismanaging money, especially to the degree of our current provincial government, then it’s probably time to reevaluate said government.

If Brad Wall wants to keep cutting cost-effective programming to be replaced with what will no doubt be vacuous black holes on our tax dollars, then maybe Brad Wall should resign his post, hmm? But, since we know that scenario will never come to be, we, as a collective student body, need to break out of our own apathy, and start asking the right groups the right questions.

Vianne Timmons’ forums and Tom Chase’s slides do not hold the answers that we need to salvage this institution. We need to begin asking the government officials why the province is funding a stadium in any capacity while the province’s universities face gross under-funding. We need to ask government officials why this university needed to formulate a plan in which it might not receive any funding increase at all.

We, the students, need to rise up, and show the “right and honorable” jackals in the legislature that higher education means something just a little bit more than being a rig worker or a potash miner. The mailing information for your local MLA is not hard to find.

This is a call to arms: inundate their offices with letters, e-mails, and telephone messages. Let them know that if the University of Regina is going to crumble by their hand, then it is that same hand that we will use to drag them down to hell with us. In some European countries, the typewriter had to be registered as a dangerous weapon. Let’s show the province why.

Kyle Leitch
A&C Writer

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