A few days ago, I received a pleasant and friendly message in my UofT mailbox under the subject line “your student account has a balance.” The contents, listed in accessible and personable point-form, reminded me that if I did not pay my outstanding tuition and student fees that day, I would start to collect interest on my account.
Despite having worked 40-hour weeks in the service industry while attending summer classes for the larger part of the summer, I hadn’t quite reached my personal goal for comfortable savings going into the school year. Regardless, with student loans, a Vic scholarship, and an ongoing job with consistent hours, I don’t consider myself among the most economically disadvantaged in our school community. I was a bit sad to see that email, but I paid my fees—because that’s the contract we’re in at this institution and paying the fees is part of what you do. A melancholy strain of “Taps” played over a loop of every depressing memory from my months of night shifts as I watched my savings essentially disappear when I clicked “pay bill.”
This time of year always makes me think about how as a student, the concept of money is one that I can’t quite wrap my head around. I understand that there is a reason for student fees, and as a levy head I do think these fees are worth something for the experiences and opportunities they make available to people. Without them, The Strand would absolutely not be able to run the way that it does. But I can’t help but laugh at the irony of fee deadlines coming in so close to the breaking story of the recent UTSU lawsuit. In case you missed The Varsity’s or other Canadian news media’s coverage of this surreal campus development, it has been reported that the former president, vice-president internal, and executive director of the UTSU are alleged to have committed civil fraud in writing severance payments that amounted to $247,726.40, or around 10% of the UTSU’s overall budget.
There’s a reason that this event is covered in The Strand’s humour section, because looking at it in a comedic light seems to be the only way to avoid being overtaken by debilitating sadness. It’s also necessary because humour is the only way I personally can look at those numbers and pretend to have a lens with which to understand them. I have no idea what $247,726.40 looks like, let alone what ten times that number looks like, or what one could possibly expect to buy with that money. I do know that if I had that kind of money lying around, I could pay for my minimum four-year degree and not be in massive debt at the end of it, which would be fun.
Maybe this piece is making me come across as economically illiterate. All I know is that aside from campus involvement and my studies, I don’t have a hell of a lot of time for reading up on economic theory because I’m spending most of my spare time at my job so I can feed myself and maybe only be paying off debt until I die. The flippant way in which money seems to be handled at UofT may have contributed to my economic illiteracy—what with tuition hikes every year on the one hand and a solid month of classes suspended last year on the other, due to educators feeling that they aren’t being paid enough to feed themselves and the school saying “Nah, we think you’re good.”
I haven’t had the opportunity to write a cheque to myself for $9,782.24 of overtime hours. Given the opportunity, I’m not sure that I would, because I’m the kind of person who will merely be sad and click “pay bill” when I get the email telling me it’s time to do that. Given the behaviour of our student government with our money, I’m not sure if this attitude is going to help me succeed out there in the real world. But I’m going to keep clicking the button when I need to and try to believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that honesty and hard work will get me somewhere.
