The Peak

SFPIRG serves the public good

By Sarah Atkinson

While I am discouraged by the attitudes fomenting on campus around progressive student initiatives like Sustainable SFU, the World University Service of Canada (WUSC), and especially SFPIRG, I have been pleasantly surprised by the open debate and student engagement taking place within The Peak by people who are passionate about the important issues at hand: student activism, organizational transparency, environmental sustainability, accountability, and so on.

As a student who was very active and involved during my undergraduate years at the University of Calgary, and a new board member of SFPIRG, I am pleased to see students engaging on issues that matter to them, and would like to continue with the debate.

I have attended four universities throughout my academic career, and although student life is really what you make of it, the richest experience I had as a student was at the University of Guelph in Ontario. That school boasts one of the most engaged student bodies, with very high turnout for student government elections, a range of long standing student institutions like their famous Centre for Gender Diversity and OPIRG among others. It is often in the spaces and times outside of the classroom, beyond the theory and books, where we find the most valuable and meaningful experiences, friendships, skills, networks, and ideas.

In this spirit, students pay their fee levies to support most of the organizations on campus which are apart of its culture and identity and make their university stand out from others as one they are proud to study at.

Here at SFU, the campus radio station, CJSF, the Women’s Centre, the First Nations Student Association, Out On Campus, and SFPIRG are all funded by student levy. (CJSF, The Peak, the First Nations Student Association, and SFPIRG are directly student-funded while the Student Society funds its constituency groups like the Women’s Centre and Out On Campus).

Like this newspaper, the radio, and the SFSS, all student organizations are a place for capacity building in our community leaders of tomorrow, and as such we should foster all forms of students action and organizing on campus, and facilitate their growth.

Thousands of students access the resources and participate in the programs of the various student organizations on campus, as well as take the time to build others that they feel passionate about, like the work being done towards the formation of Sustainable SFU.

While I am a board member of SFPIRG, frequently use the library and services at the Women’s Centre, and (obviously) read The Peak, there are other organizations and services that I have never interacted with and do not have the time or interest for, like the gym. My boyfriend uses the gym and my friends use the First Nations Centre, and I am all for not just keeping them around, but making them better and as accessible as possible.

However optimistic I may be, I do believe that even among those students who don’t often partake in some or any student organizations, many would agree that issues like climate change are a concern of everyone and although they may not wish to take action on the issue themselves, they support the work of people doing it on all of our behalf. Similarly, while many students may say that they would not really miss The Peak if it were to disappear, they respect the readership of this newspaper, and the work of those who get it published every week.

It is easy, when one is clever with words, to reduce the work of an organization that one is not involved with, especially with weighted terms like “standard hippy fare,” “fiercely left-wing,” and “incestuous.” Although those terms came out of an opinions piece from last week’s paper, and opinion they are, I don’t see how those terms describe the work done at SFPIRG nor the real issues that the people involved work tirelessly towards changing — like poverty, racism, climate change, and human rights.

As a director on the board of SFPIRG, I know that the resources offered here are just the seeds of the positive changes inspired in the individual, their community, campus, and society as a whole.