I like to consider myself politically savvy, or, at the very least, politically informed, not to mention politically opinionated. I am not, however, one who enjoys endless political debate or long, drawn-out political discourse. I find my eyes begin to glaze over and I start thinking about monster trucks or old episodes of The Golden Girls after a few minutes. I attribute this to the fabulist nature of anyone who desperately wants you to side with them. It reminds me in a roundabout way of my feelings toward endless bureaucratic red tape: just say what you mean, tell me what you are going to make me do so that you’ll go away, and let me live my life the way I want to live it. All the grandstanding and false narratives that politicians and their acolytes wear like a second skin are stupid and make me wish I were allowed to face-punch. Ditto for bureaucratic cogs that make you stand in Line A to fill out form B so that you are eligible to stand in line C to get within striking distance of form D. Face-punch.
On the off chance that you dislike the things I dislike, I have marshalled my thoughts on a few of the pressing matters of the day and will be employing my unique and specially designed rating system for these issues. This system is called “Face-punch or no face-punch,” but that’s still a working title. I think you’ll find that, despite being slightly unimaginative in the naming department, the system itself is exceedingly handy.
I’ll provide a brief example. Camosun deciding to build student housing is not a face-punch; on-campus housing will be great for international students, or domestic ones with enough coin to not live in their parents’ basement. Deciding to do it in the busiest part of the parking lot when there is a huge chunk of the parking lot that is primarily used by driving instructors teaching people to park, fine-arts majors smoking weed before heading to the pottery studio, and elderly people taking their dogs for a walk? Well, my friends, that is a face-punch. With temperatures dropping, it unfortunately seems like we, the current students, are on the receiving end of this particular face-punch.
Now that we understand my system, and before we drift too far from my intentional segue of mentioning international students, let’s get down to brass tacks.
With the federal government’s nascent cap on international students being admitted, the number of enrolments from abroad has decreased quite drastically, which means that Camosun —already among those facing a deficit—will further have to tighten its belt. With the impending review of post-secondary funding in British Columbia due to give its findings on the quickly approaching date of March 15, a grim picture begins to emerge.
Let’s imagine for a brief and shining moment that we live under a system where everyone wants the best for everyone else, and that the “bottom line” is a happy, productive life for your fellow humans instead of the almighty dollar. If that were the case, then why has this review been proposed, accepted, and executed so hastily, during a time when the government was largely shut down for its winter break?
One of the concerns advocacy groups have raised is that the allowable two-percent cap on tuition hikes might end up on the chopping block. It seems that since our institutions need oodles more money to stay open due to the fact that those institutions are no longer raking in the big bucks from international students, it would serve the province quite nicely if the colleges and universities in question could just make up the difference by charging domestic students through the nose. Now, I’m nothing if not a big picture kind of guy, so I understand that the money must come from somewhere, but I just think that there are other avenues than forcing students to sleep in their cars (which are presumably parked anywhere but in our drastically reduced parking lot).
Another cause for concern is the much-maligned and intentionally vague talk of “duplication.” When the powers that be use this term in regard to post-secondary education, it means one thing and one thing only: more than one school offering the same courses. Why on earth should the provincial government fund multiple schools when I, a resident of Saanich, could just make the commute to Nanaimo to attend Vancouver Island University for classes? While Camosun may seem like the obvious choice to be the one to remain open, being in the urban centre of the island, we must remember that Nanaimo is closer to the geographical centre of the island, which looks better on paper. Another way it could go is that each school would remain open, but would only be able to offer what the other school doesn’t, so you would have morning English classes in Victoria, afternoon Psychology in Nanaimo, and then hop a ferry to Powell River’s VIU campus for your evening Anthropology class. Conversely, if you are in a silly program like Creative Writing, like me, you could kiss your program goodbye altogether, since the reviewing committee will also be looking at which programs make the best economic sense—the salt-of-the-earth trades will surely survive, but the pie-in-the-sky creatives may not come out of this looking quite so rosy.
I guess we have to wait until March to see what the fickle hand of fate will deal us, but this certainly feels like a Sword of Damocles moment, and you know how the old adage goes: if it walks like a face-punch, and talks like a face-punch…
Now that I’ve really got my bilious juices flowing, let us segue once again to international affairs. What the hell, man? It seems like every day we have a new potentially catastrophic event to contend with. While the politics within academia may seem riddled with occlusion and subterfuge, can we really blame our government for being sneaky and trying to horde it’s doubloons like Smaug when we are literally at the doorstep of a madman?
The US has always been… interesting. It’s a bit like the sloppy, drunk, racist, sexist uncle that you hope to only interact with at family functions but still want to stay on the right side of in case he dies and bequeaths you a bunch of money. Or at least you hope that he spares your life if and when he builds himself a Killdozer and wages war on the town.
Unfortunately, however, it seems that our neighbours to the south have reached a new level of insanity; they are not only waging war and annexing countries like it’s going out of style, but they’re also waging war amongst themselves. It hasn’t escaped my attention that the only states being brought to task are the ones that historically lean towards the liberal. The most frightening part is that they are not even pretending anymore that it’s all done for some greater good that only they know about. It’s like if God came down to earth and said, “By the way, I wasn’t killing babies with cancer and causing natural disasters as part of a grand design, I was just doing it because I don’t like you guys and think you suck.”
I think the biggest concern right now is if they decide to bring Greenland under their heel, effectively stealing it from Denmark. We would literally be surrounded by America, and then who do you think is the next target? We would be a sitting duck, and not just any duck, but one that’s plump and juicy with all our softwood lumber, minerals, and the ubiquitous opiate of the oligarchy: oil. It’s a terrifying prospect. The rotting pumpkin that is Donald Trump is a maniac that moves quickly; he’s not like the lumbering horror movie zombies that you can outrun at a brisk power walk, he’s a zoom-bie, and one with the arsenal of the most powerful military in the world to bring him whatever his fetid heart desires.
Trump reminds me of Hexus, the villain from the movie Fern Gully; a sludgy little blob that gets more powerful as it consumes natural resources for love of oil. The main differences, aside from one being a cartoon voiced by the inimitable Tim Curry, is that Hexus had a really great theme song and was eventually defeated by fairies and the power of love. Now, I’m a fairy of a different sort myself, and I will be the first to admit that the power of love seems like a lacking weapon. What it will take to defeat this monstrosity is something far greater, but the old “power of love” trope is not without merit. They are all children of the same despotic ideals: the Commander in Chief of the US of A, the war machine that he alone controls, our own country’s nearsightedness in closing the borders to those seeking knowledge, and our own province’s knee-jerk reaction to a fluctuation in revenue allocation. The only weapon that has a chance, and one already in our arsenal, is for all of us to truly remember what we love and what it will take to see it thrive.
I want to learn about long-dead poets of the romantic era, and the secret symbolism of rococo art, and I want to do it while rubbing elbows with people of every conceivable race, creed, origin, and intersectional identity. I want to do this in a place that is green and thriving, unsullied by war and our world’s vulgar and unnecessary dependence on oil. I want to do this in a place of my choosing, close to the people I care about. I want to do this without going into debt so massive that it will be passed down to my dog, and then my dog’s dog after I’m dead and buried. All of the myriad issues we are facing today are interconnected by threads—some gossamer, some as big as a pipeline—but all those in power who deserve so many face-punches that my knuckles are bruised just thinking about it are just products of our world, products of the same systems as us, and it would help us all to keep that in mind and move forward with understanding.
Understanding, and a good swift face-punch to anyone who is obstinate or unscrupulous enough to continue to cling to the old ways that no longer serve us. To borrow the eloquent words of the visionary Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista movement, “Our choice is not between war and peace, but between life with dignity, or life without.”