Student Alliance Schools Halifax

Earlier this week I spoke with Kyle Shaw, Editor for The Coast. Here is the editorial from this week's edition of The Coast:

Student alliance schools Halifax Halifax Student Alliance is a new local alliance of students, was built to take on City Hall's slow grind. by Kyle Shaw write the author

You'd expect Halifax to give more of a shit about its student community. Tens of thousands of vibrant minds arriving each September, as natural as the tide coming in, are a resource to make any other city drool. But not this town, where municipal services like Metro Transit and the police go beyond apathy to treat their student customers with contempt. For an example, read "Jaywalking to justice" on page 60, about how one student got welcomed to his new home by a police officer and wound up in a legal nightmare. The main reason any government can get away with treating students badly is turnover. A student activist who wants something---lower tuition, late-night bus service, a clothing-optional campus---can be passionate and vocal and organized and morally right, but the bureaucracy always has time on its side. Those wheels of change move a lot slower than a Bachelor degree. Students are getting increasingly sophisticated about dealing with this problem, forming student organizations that can carry the torch while individual students come and go. The biggest such organization in the country is the Canadian Federation of Students, lobbying the federal government on students' behalf since 1981. The newest is the Halifax Student Alliance, demanding better from city hall since last November. The HSA was formed in response to the regional municipality's epidemic of muggings and beatings. While Haligonians of all stripes---young and old, student and civilian---had been getting pounded on neighbourhood streets for years, city hall didn't care until fall '06, when an American visitor was stabbed to death outside a bar. Facing that potential tourism disaster in a media spotlight, mayor Peter Kelly woke up to the problem and convened the Mayor's Roundtable on Violence. A study took place to figure out how violence was hitting residents, but it happened over the summer of 2007, effectively excluding the student experience. That oversight, whether by accident or design, was the last straw. The student unions at Dal, SMU and other local schools got together to launch the HSA, then polled their combined membership---over 30,000 students---about violence. Current HSA chair Mark Coffin, who's also the education vice-president at the Dal Student Union, says the information HSA gave the mayor resulted in a 60-page section of the roundtable's report. And it showed students are more likely to be victims of violence than their civilian counterparts. Coffin's career as a student politician is probably nearing its end---he's going into his fourth year of an environmental science degree---but the HSA's in it for the long haul. Just the third municipal lobbying group of its kind in Canada, after Calgary and Edmonton, it is the only one with a paid executive director and long-term funding guaranteed from its members, who each pay $2 per year to the organization. The HSA is focused on the upcoming municipal election, determined to make violence and Metro Transit key issues. Hopefully for all of us, they will succeed. "It's in the best interest of the Halifax economy," Coffin points out. "Students contribute about $300 million annually according to Donald Clairmont, author of the report on violence, so if Halifax doesn't treat its students right, and if we're not making sure that Halifax is an attractive city and a safe city and an easy to get around city, then that number is slowly going to start to shrink. And it's going to have an effect on the wider community."

DSU Radio Show - August 26th

DSU Radio Show - August 26th

Special Guest: Andres Fuentes, VP Education From the University of Waterloo Federation of Students who joined me to talk about post secondary education, the problems facing undergraduate students in Ontario and across Canada, and the ever-looming never-arriving federal election. (Click image to download)

A Living and Learning Community

Like it or leave it, Halifax is a student city. It's not just a city with half-a-dozen universities dropped in the middle of it, rather it is a city with multiple campuses that are both communities of their own, and are intricately and awkwardly woven into a much larger community. This creates challenges for our municipal officials when tackling difficult issues like public safety, public transportation and urban design.

Believe it or not, student's pump over $300 Million into the HRM economy each year, benefiting not only the universities that are busy inhaling our tuition fees but also our local businesses and entrepreneurs. While most don't pay property tax directly, we rent from landlords or universities who do, and many live at home with parents who pay property tax.

Proactive planning for a student friendly city isn't going to be easy. The problems our city students face aren't going to be solved simply by adopting new policies and putting money in new projects. A grassroots, multistakeholder approach is what is needed. Student unions and student associations need to be involved, university administrations need to be involved, the HRM obviously needs to be involved, and community members need to be involved.

In order to solve the problems our city faces, we need to begin to break down the campus-community divide. Student's on campus all too often live and think in a bubble, nescient to the neighbouring environment. Neigbourhoods can often make students feel isolated when they move into their first apartment; treating them as a problem first and a neighbour second. I'd say a real solution would require cooperation from both sides, but the reality is that any affable agreement is fundamentally going to require students be viewed as members of their community, and likewise accepting the responsibilities of being such.

There are several things we can do to start encouraging this kind of movement. Universities can begin offering credit for applied learning initiatives that challenge students to put their learned skills to help our community, as Don Clairmont suggests. Student associations like the DSU can (and do) work with existing community associations to help solve some of the problems our neighbourhoods are facing. The municipality can take a leadership role, and ensure consultation with students is a priority.

Earlier this year Dalhousie, Saint Mary's and NSCC students joined together to fund the Halifax Student Alliance (HSA), a municipal advocacy group that works on behalf of students to make our city a safer, more affordable, more youth friendly place to live. This year will be the first year the HSA will be fully operational, and we're working to achieve our goals by doing many of the things I've already mentioned, and many more. If you're interested in getting involved, learning more about our issues or speaking to your campus HSA rep, drop me a line at dsuvped (at) Dal (dot) ca .

- Mark