JoelNothman.com

Today was a National Day of Action for students across Canada to demonstrate their longing for “high-quality, accessible post-secondary education.” Students were meant to meet at 1:30pm at the Roddick Gates and march out to the Premier’s office, before a gay afternoon of “food, drinks (of all kinds), and festivities” alongside a screening of the movie “My Student Loan”.

Wow. It’s a little different here from what I’m used to back home. In montreal, I’ve never entered a class to find it the sujbect of a recent “flyer drop”. No one’s even stood at the entrance of the room or building handing out their rhetoric. I’ve not experienced a Canadian “lecture bash”; not seen people bludging their classes to wear bright t-shirts and huddle in groups around footpath tables or otherwise flying from poster-board to poster-board with staple-gun and roll of bright mass-copied paper in hand. People usually wear just clothes, not stickers and badges. And there are no rabid extremist politicians calling out against the government (or any cause) as you journey on by them on the street.

The best people have here to promote their cause seems to be a handful of poster-boards around the place, samosa and bake sales in the foyers of Leacock or Redpath, the usual annoying flyer distributions (usually for clubs on Friday nights) by people on either side of the narrow Milton Gate exit, e-mailing lists, and (of course) Facebook groups.

I mean, it’s understandable that they don’t rally loudly for hours on the campus’s equivalent of USyd’s Front Lawn. After all, it is covered in snow and so not so lawny; and unless they were all rallying hard, the -10 degree weather would eventually be unbearable, at least for some. Besides, they don’t seem to have yet conceptualised the free sausage sizzle around here.

But, seriously, the main physical form of advertisement coming up to today’s event was a handful of Letter-sized, glossy, bright green posters. Much more cheery than the startling red that all year long emblazons Sydney Uni’s walkways, at least for the clubs that can afford colour printing.

As the time came around, I’d still not heard anyone mention the upcoming rally in person—only emails from SSMU = the Union—and my lecture theatre at 1:30 was as full as usual.

Sorry James J.: not the campus for you, I guess.

PS: Who says post-secondary? Doesn’t tertiary follow primary and secondary?
PPS: Then again, who says “gay” and means “jolly”? Clearly I do.