So UBC has raised tuition by two per cent for domestic students and four per cent for international students. Once again, your already over-taxed wallets are screaming out for help. But, like many reasonable people, you think, “Well, with the falling purchasing power of today’s dollar, and the massive structural deficit UBC is facing, two per cent just ain’t that bad.”

You’re right, chum. That’s just about nine bucks more per course for domestic students—just one pitcher at Koerner’s you will have to put off. Except that a pitcher at Koerner’s is now $11.50, the minimum wage isn’t getting any higher, and housing costs in Vancouver are catastrophically high. So, nine bucks more per course?

There really isn’t any recourse against UBC. As students, we have very little say in what goes on in the murky darkness of the Secret Board of Shadowy Governors. UBC wasn’t set up to be a democracy, but BC was. And a good chunk of us are full-fledged enfranchised citizens of BC who have a right to have a say in where government funding goes. Many of us are very valuable future citizens of BC, so the government should have a vested interest in keeping us upwardly mobile and educated. High tuition rates do not help.

We’re planning on leaving CASA, an organization which lobbies on behalf of universities, so we’re going to be focusing on our own lobbying efforts. Mr Future VP External: if you’ve got the chops you claim you do, let’s see that excess funding go to lobbying the BC government. And let’s not worry about those foolish things the AMS can do nothing about and shouldn’t concern itself with, and worry about something very real to every student—education funding.