Confederate Wing

Hopefully the impressive turnout at yesterday’s first open writer’s meeting of the new year will lead to a more diverse variety of contributors to the newspaper in the coming weeks. It’s been three years since the last truly packed open meeting, and I’m more than happy to see ledes go out to more than just the same five or six people week after week. I think I’ve written more for the paper this year than the last two years combined, and that goes without considering the odds and ends I do on the side (puzzles, website, copy editing, etc.). If I can spend the time I normally devote to churning out a news piece week after week to doing well in class, there may yet be hope for graduate school after all.

Speaking of class, last semester’s Latin Prose term paper debacle still hasn’t been resolved. In fact the fall semester went so poorly that I still haven’t checked my grades, and I really dread what they’ll end up being. Fortunately, winter semesters have traditionally been better for me, a trend which seems poised to continue. I only have two essays to forge/cleverly synthesize and present as my own work write, and the overall work load appears to be fairly light. Without getting too cocky, Method and Theory in Classics should be a bird course, my professor in Latin Historians is sympathetic to the fact that my Wednesday evening obligations may often interfere with his Thursday morning class, Latin Drama is all Plautus and Terence with one of my favourite professors, and my Latin Composition professor casually uses words like “wanker” and other derivations of such. Remarkably, I’m still enthusiastic about going to class the first week after getting back from holidays. Isn’t it amazing what good professors teaching (mostly) interesting courses can do for a student’s eagerness?

At any rate, my first contribution to the newspaper this semester is a news story on the recently announced tuition rebate. It’s posted below and is also available on the newspaper‘s website through the link in the headline.

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Liberals launch Ontario tuition grant

Half of Ontario’s undergraduates eligible to receive 30 per cent tuition rebate

Starting this month, many undergraduate students pursuing post-secondary education in Ontario can look forward to a 30 per cent tuition rebate. The new program, a core component of the Liberal campaign platform and spearheaded by “education premier” Dalton McGuinty, will be available to roughly half of the province’s undergraduates.

“This is permanent,” said Glen Murray, Ontario Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities, in a teleconference to student media groups province-wide this past Friday. “As long as you’re a student, you’re in the program.”

Those eligible for the tuition rebate must be within four years of having completed high school, enrolled in full-time programs, and from households with a gross income of less than $160,000 annually. Part-time, graduate, and international students, however, will not be receiving the grant, exclusions which have caused some backlash.

The Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario has claimed that the $423-million funding the rebate could have been better spent slashing tuition fees for all. “They (CFS-Ontario) have taken a very different approach than any of the other student associations, and they change their mind all the time,” Murray said in response to criticisms from Canada’s largest student organization. “During the election it was a (tuition) freeze, after the election it was a 12 per cent cut. Every time we’ve turned around and done something, the glass is always half empty for them, and they change their position from month to month.”

When asked about the reasons behind these exclusions, Murray cited the immediate pressures of the rising number of students entering colleges and universities year after year. “We had 100,000 more students go to college and university this past academic year than we did the year before,” he said. “That’s more entering the system than during the double cohort year (which occurred in 2003 when the province eliminated grade 13 and thereby dramatically increased the graduating secondary school students that year).”

Murray went on to explain how the grant was designed to help students with their first four years of university, and how a post-secondary education is necessary to prevent being at a disadvantage in the future. “70 per cent of jobs out there require college or university education,” Murray claimed.

Opponents from PC and NDP camps similarly malign the grant for its limited benefit to only some 310,000 of an estimated 600,000 – 700,000 students, the $423-million hit to a province attempting to balance a $16-billion deficit, and the elimination of other funding initiatives. Both the Queen Elizabeth II Award and The Ontario Textbook and Technology Grant are being phased out to accommodate the tuition rebate, leading to accusations of a mere ‘bait and switch.’

“There was a ‘bait and switch’ here: we’re switching a minnow for a whale!” Murray joked. “We’re phasing out very small programs that were very expensive to administer, and we’re taking those same staff to administer the new, much larger programs. You’ve got to keep retooling government to make sure that, as you improve programs, you’re getting rid of ones that are no longer effective.”

Undergraduates receiving OSAP are automatically considered and will receive a direct deposit if eligible. All other undergraduates must apply online and reconfirm for every year in which they qualify for the grant. University students will receive $800 this semester while college students will receive $365. Come September, the respective rebates will be $1,600 and $730 annually, and students will continue to receive the grant until their fourth year of study.

Though Murray playfully trusts the “brilliant, editorial, journalistic genius of student newspapers” to get the message out, he promises the province will advertise the rebate “by absolutely every way possible,” including on campus representation and social media outreach.

For more information and to apply for your rebate, click here.