#IAmAStudent: the student fightback at UBC

Rebel Youth presents an interview with University of British Columbia student activist Kelly Gerlings

Interview by Rozh Armand

RY: What sparked the #IAMASTUDENT movement? How did it start?

KG: In early October 2014, the UBC Alma Mater Society (AMS) [the student union] leaked a proposed 10% increase to international tuition and a 20% increase to 8-month contracts for on-campus housing. Quickly students began organizing and speaking about the proposals. Just as quickly it was understood that if the students were going to be heard, they would need to organize outside of the AMS. And so within about a week of getting the news, a Teach-In was held for more information to be disseminated, and out of this, the group “I Am A Student” (IAAS) was 'born', in a sense.

Student struggles in Canada

Excerpt from the 25th Central Convention documents of the Young Communist League of Canada on the struggle of high school and post-secondary students.

The primary contradiction in the struggle for increased access to education is: corporations want a trained workforce but they will not pay for it through corporate taxes, forcing the people to pay for education through wages, savings and especially debt. The working people want accessible, emancipatory education.

This class perspective is often obscured. The struggle for access is presented as a simply universal fight against the government. Right-social democratic ideas in the student movement deliberately avoid class perspectives and misrepresent the state as neutral. Yet the state’s decisions are, generally, in line with the banks and businesses. And the single largest group of youth impeded and excluded from post-secondary are youth from the working-class majority.