2002
In 2000, Principal Bill Leggett, supported by corporate members of the Board of Trustees (TD, CIBC, Scotiabank, and RBC were represented on the board at that time), started promoting the deregulation of Arts and Science tuition as a means of improving the quality of education at Queen’s, approaching the provincial government with a proposal for “locally administered tuition”. Subsequently, “[i]n April 2003, two Ontario law schools approved significant increases to their tuition fees, marking a rise from approximately $2,451 in 1995 to $16,000 for the 2003-04 at the University of Toronto and from $3,228 in 1997 to approximately $8,961 in 2003 at Queen’s University. Further, the University of Toronto intend[ed] to increase tuition fees until they total[ed] $22,000 and Queen‘s University ha[d] projected to increase its fees to $12,856 by 2005” [1].
In reaction to this social injustice and act of exclusion, the Queen’s Coalition Against Tuition Deregulation, a working group of OPIRG Kingston, emerged to fight deregulation in the fall of that year: The first campaign was organizing a “No to Deregulation” referendum which saw about 90% of Arts and Science voters voting against deregulation. Though it was clear that students rejected deregulation as a means of addressing declining investment in post-secondary education, Leggett continued to suggest that deregulation could both improve the quality of education at Queen’s and improve accessibility through offering grants to low income students. As cliche as this may sound, Leggett could not provide practical ways in which the deregulation would benefit students from already excluded and marginalized groups.
Thus, the struggle against tuition deregulation continued until four students and one former student occupied Leggett’s office for five days in 2002 (Jan 15-19), demanding:
- A tuition freeze in all programs for the academic year 2002/2003.
- That William Leggett publicly rescind his current proposal to the provincial government that Queen’s University be made a test-case for tuition deregulation.
- That any future proposals for Arts & Science tuition deregulation must be agreed upon by the majority of voting students in a binding Arts & Science referendum on a question collectively devised and agreed upon by a representative of ASUS, a representative of Queen’s Administration, and a representative of the Coalition Against Deregulation.
- Amnesty for those involved in the occupations.
During the protest, the Queen’s Coalition Against Tuition Deregulation also received support from student governments from universities across the country and groups from around the world, as well as hundreds of Queen’s alumni who refused to donate money to Queen’s as long as deregulation was on the agenda. Due to the pressure, Leggett backed down; but that did not necessarily mean that the issue is certainly off the administration’s agenda. Other schools staged similar events shortly after, with eight students occupying the principal’s office at Trent suffering major repression, including arrests and strip-searches.
References
[1] Smith, Charles (2004). “Tuition fee increases and the history of racial exclusion in Canadian legal education”. Ontario Human Rights Commission. https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/race-policy-dialogue-papers/tuition-fee-increases-and-history-racial-exclusion-canadian-legal-education
Further reading