As some of you may or may not know, I am a student–a student, I proudly tell everyone I interact with, of Communication (that’s no ’s’) at [tag]Simon Fraser University[/tag] in Burnaby, British Columbia. For the 4 years that I have been one, I have never felt ashamed to be a student of Communication. Not even when I read about what’s been going on back at my fair university – staff members getting fired, computers containing confidential information being taken off campus, money being wasted, secret meetings and investigations, confidentiality clauses, an impeachment campaign! Yet I always had faith that there were pockets of people that were willing to get riled up about this sort of stuff–who, if not the leaders of tomorrow? I was always proud to be among their number, even as SFU’s reputation as a “radical university” has been laughed at and Communication been dismissed as a “phony degree.”
That is, until today.
Why? This is why:
[tag]SFSS[/tag] [Simon Fraser Student Society] /SDU [Students for a Demoratic University] Debate
As the CMNSU [Communication Student Union] has no formal position on this conflict, it was decided that we would not send a member to represent the student union at the debate. Members are free to attend as concerned individuals.
I’d read it once before, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they were still catching up with the facts, which have been splashed far and wide online and in print. Maybe they were still talking about it. Maybe they were so caught up in rounding up froshies that they just didn’t get around to thinking really hard about it.
But no. My fears are indeed confirmed.
I feel pretty personally about this on a multitude of levels – one of the links up there, the one to SFU’s student paper, The Peak, has a letter to the editor written by a former [tag]CMNSU[/tag] president. The Peak’s current chief editor is also a former CMNSU president. Communication as a discipline prides itself on its critical (yet occasionally constructive) stance towards the institutions that participate, wrongly or rightly, in our lives, that we don’t always participate in enough ourselves. It sees the primacy of the communicative act as action–and that quote speaks more to me than anything else I’ve heard from the CMNSU as of late. It speaks of defeat.
How, I wonder, did the CMNSU come to this decision? I think I’m even afraid to ask, so I’m not even going to. I don’t want to know how anyone could sit through the classes I’ve gone through and say that they take no position on this matter. For what, I wonder? But I shall keep those questions to myself, for no answers are forthcoming–that I know. I won’t bother with blame, though I most definitely have a forum for my questions. The disappointment is thick, though, and hard to swallow. I always thought there were Communication students that were more active, more vocal, more adamant. It appears they have graduated.
I feel fortunate that the majority of my schooling is behind me, and that I am but 11 credits shy of having that BA for real. I am glad I have an idea of what I want and why I want it, and am able to surround myself with people who support that; because if I were standing among my fellow Communication students now, I am not certain that I would be inspired.
All I know is, I shall remain a strident student of life. Life in all its suffering and its striving, its glory and its gore, its moments of quiet disregard, and the screams that come from the witnesses wondering.
