Editorial
Biting the Hand that Feeds
The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance has recently launched Food for Thought — a campaign to “highlight inequities” in the Ontario Student Assistance Program. As part of the lobby effort, OUSA has enlisted five students to go 19 days spending only $7.50 a day on food costs — the amount budgeted by OSAP loans.
While OUSA’s attempts to address the problems faced by cash-strapped university students are admirable, the Food for Thought initiative is an example of a campaign with no real validity when reasonably considered.
Only $7.50 a day for food appears low, but when one considers that adds up to a monthly total of over $200, the allotment suddenly seems manageable.
The purpose of financial aid is self-explanatory — it aims to provide students with financial assistance, not full-blown support. If students are truly struggling with finances, they should seek out the numerous scholarships and bursaries available for those in financial need — many which are often unclaimed. Other options include Western’s Work Study program, or the old-fashioned route — getting a job.
OUSA would be better off using its resources to inform students about budgeting and other sources of cash.
It’s especially difficult to take OUSA’s lobby efforts seriously when so many students brag about misusing their OSAP funds — most of us have overheard a friend joke about using financial assistance to pay for a spring break trip or to fund their bar tab.
OSAP should not have to compensate for the irresponsibility of students. OUSA’s campaign could be viewed as a slap in the face for those students who responsibly budget their finances.
Instead of relying on OSAP exclusively, students should be encouraged to seek part-time work, which could provide a positive learning experience for many. Juggling schoolwork with a job could give many a better understanding of how to allocate their time.
It’s important to note attending university is the choice of students and their families — if that means living on a tight budget, so be it. Instead of complaining about the exorbitant costs of university, individuals could always opt to work after high school, and earn enough to pay for studies without taking out a loan.
In the end, being cash-strapped is part of the student reality. If anything, most students are in desperate need of financial management advice. Learning how to budget can be viewed as part of what it means to be a university student. OUSA’s campaign simply makes excuses for students to mismanage their finances rather than encouraging them to improve their budgeting skills.
10 Comments
the self-important idiots that write for the gazette stun me again with their ignorance.
i am curious how many of them live off of osap. i am also curious how many of them question what, exactly, the purpose of higher education is meant to be.
i am also curious as to how many of these gazette writers/editors have ever asked themselves: do *i* deserve to be getting this education, just because i can pay for it?
its shocking that young people can be this conservative….but i suppose this is western we are talking about. not exactly a bastion of liberal thought.
When did it become assumed that a student is entitled to “live off osap”?
It is meant to be a source of assistance to students, not their one and only source of income while they’re in school. There’s nothing to prevent a student from topping up the $7.50 per day food allowance from their own pockets if they decide it isn’t enough, right?
If the plan is that OSAP will fund the entire cost of existence during the years spent at uni I suspect there will be a lot of really bitter students by graduation
This article is ridiculous. It presents an obviously uniformed and highly opinionated view of what OSAP is all about. Since the author seems to be lacking any type of account from someone who has actually used OSAP at all, let alone for the past 5 years, I’ll offer some facts.
First off, $7.50 or $200 a month for food is nothing. At 6’6” and 245lbs, if I budgeted my food to $200/month, I’d be stuck eating raw pasta. Especially when one considers the ever increasing price of healthy foods including fruits, vegetables, and meats.
Statements like “most of us have overheard a friend joke about using financial assistance to pay for a spring break trip or to fund their bar tab” should not be taken seriously, or be given any credibility. When there is only $200/month allocated for food, do you honestly believe someone can manage to set aside more than a thousand dollars for a trip? Not without needing a bailout from the parents, the credit cards, or the banks before the end of the year.
Finally, why should students be forced to work part-time jobs? I tried this for two years, until i figured out the more money I made at minimum wage, the less OSAP funding I received. Not only did the job suck, but it killed my marks in school as well as any social life. What is the point of working a low paying part-time job while in school, when its easier to take the loans and pay them back with interest once I find full time employment paying much better after graduation.
Maybe the gazette should employ some actual journalists, to inquire into things like the arbitrary fees that every OSAP recipient needs to pay with their tuition every year. Convenient how the University is able to profit so easily with a government agency designed to support cash-strapped students, seems like a case of collusion to me. But what do us po’ folk know…
Hi Phil,
This is not an article, but an editorial. You can click on the author name at the top (“Editorial Board”) to learn more about why this piece was written.
Thanks Stuart,
So according to this site “The editorial board is comprised of editors and volunteers from the Gazette. Opinion articles written by the editorial board receive contributions from multiple Gazette writers and represent the paper’s position on an issue.”
Now my head is really spinning if this was a team effort. Yikes. The editorial board needs to google ‘groupthink’. Opinion or not, this is garbage misinformation and I would gather that the team of wannabe fox news journalists that wrote this tripe don’t realize some of our credit cards aren’t automatically reset to zero by daddy every month.
Hi Phil,
I’m a full time university student, I contribute 40+ hours a week to the Gazette, I pay my way through school and I have a social life. I also contributed to this editorial and every single other editorial our paper has produced. And I’m not the only one in our office who does this.
Your characterization of Gazette editors and volunteers as “wannabe [sic] fox news journalists” is baseless and nonsensical. It’s a shame you feel the need to slander our paper and the individuals who work hard to put it out four days a week.
I’m sorry you have trouble making ends meet. Maybe if you spent less time spreading cowardly libel on the internet and more time doing something constructive you wouldn’t be in such a predicament. But then again, I’m just a trust fund baby whose credit card is “reset to zero by daddy every month”, right? I would love to hear how you know so much about my life and the lives of my peers.
If you don’t like our coverage — so be it. Feel free to contribute to a positive discussion by making a rational argument based on reason and fact. Making disparaging, antagonistic remarks about a group of student journalists is gutless. In the future, feel free to go elsewhere.
-Arden Zwelling
Sports Editor
Dear readers,
Look! The Gazette covers OSAP-related issues in various capacities, such as this front-page feature story from a couple years ago, for example: http://www.gazette.uwo.ca/article.cfm?section=FrontPage&articleID=1164
Also, please keep in mind that we are a diverse editorial board from diverse backgrounds, with diverse opinions and outlooks — just like this student body.
Thanks for reading.
- Lauren Pelley
Senior Editor
Hey Arden,
Looks like you are a little confused and a little bit angry that I had the audacity to question the basis for this editorial.
I’m glad you are able to contribute 40+ hours a week to the gazette while balancing a full course load. Just like I said, I have been in the same position (different jobs) and it ends up hurting other things like marks and social life. Maybe you still have a social life, but I can guarantee that there are negative impacts felt elsewhere, after all there is only so much time in a week.
Next point, who said I have a hard time making ends meet? “Maybe if you spent less time spreading cowardly libel on the internet and more time doing something constructive you wouldn’t be in such a predicament” Are you kidding me? This is same the assumption-laden garbage as expressed in the editorial.
Actually in reality, I was actually on the internet trying to learn something new about my community — reading the news. It would have been constructive, had I some actual informative news to read, not this one sided diatribe. Furthermore, I have the time to do things constructive, like read the news on a break from essay writing, because I spent my summer working 60+ hours/week landscaping. I make a lot of money, but it falls short of paying for the next 8 months of school, this is where OSAP comes in.
I rely on OSAP to provide me with the assistance I need to pay for what I cannot. If another student is unfortunate or unwilling to work as much as me during the summer, then OSAP should cover WHATEVER they need. May I remind people that OSAP is a loan, not a free handout. What business is it of mine to tell someone how much debt they get themselves into? It gets payed back, with interest. But thats a convenient point to overlook.
In your response Arden, you tell me to use rational arguments based on fact. Funny thing is, you did not respond to a single one of the points I had made earlier. Instead, you rushed to share the exact same ungrounded and utterly one-sided accusations the gazette expressed.
I would not take offense to this usually, as our campus is a cesspool of misinformation sometimes, but when I pick up a newspaper that has been written by my peers I expect that newspaper to teach me something by providing useful information. So why is it that “In the future, feel free to go elsewhere”? Your telling me its okay for the gazette to give their unfounded opinions (I realize its not the same all the time, sometimes the articles are excellent) but if I have a different opinion, or question yours, then I should go elsewhere? Thats some fine arguing or is it politics?
Whatever you want to call it, it is not journalism. Had there been a journalist there, someone would have sent me an email to find out how I have managed 5 years of post-secondary using nothing but my own savings and OSAP. Instead, I got two replies defending this position.
Want to talk about getting a job? Good luck finding one for private industry, things work a little differently in the real world, which I see many have been sheltered from.
Phil,
Sorry you missed my point — I’ll give you another shot.
I did not mention your views on OSAP in my response because I don’t care what you think about OSAP.
What I do care about are your cowardly, antagonistic remarks directed at me and my peers. Don’t try to pretend you did not call us, among other things, “wannabe fox news [sic] journalists” who have been sheltered from the real world and have credit cards that are “automatically reset to zero by daddy every month.”
Those remarks are tremendously uninformed and ignorant. You have never met a single one of the dozens of people who contribute to the Gazette — so how can you make such comments?
As I said before, feel free to contribute to a reasonable, positive discourse. It seems that once you get past the name-calling and belittling, you can form a passable argument. But if you want to spread antagonistic libel, go elsewhere.
-Arden Zwelling
Sports Editor
Oh, right. Sure. Those less advantaged students from working class backgrounds should just get off their butts and get a part-time job. That’s what higher education is all about, right? Learning how to juggle advanced/intensive academic study with a job? Exactly. I’ll bet those farmers’ kids could really use that kind of a lesson, eh? And those ones who have parents in the trades, too! Given their backgrounds, they probably have NO idea what work’s all about. So, indeed: No free rides, buckaroos! They’ve had it too easy for too long and NOW is the time for them to learn a few things about the real world! “Welcome to higher learning, you proles! Now hit the wanted ads! Once you’ve saved enough, I’ll give you a ride down to The Ceeps in the BMW that my daddy bought me. Ciao!”